
Class H H \ %j \ 
Book^ y^b^ 
Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



HEREDITY AND SOCIAL 
PROGRESS 



•Ttg^><^° 



HEREDITY AND SOCIAL 
PROGRESS 



BY 



SIMON N. PATTEN 

WHARTON SCHOOL OF FINANCE AND ECONOMY 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

AUTHOR OF " THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH THOUGHT ' 

"THE THEORY OF PROSPERITY," ETC. 






THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1903 

All righU reserved 



THE LIfjKAF.Y OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Ccpies Received 

FEB 25 1903 

^ ^J'PV.feijt Gentry 
CLASS ^»XXc. Ne 
COPY 8. 



•T3 



Copyright, 1903, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped January, 1903. 



Notfjjooli ^PrtBS 

J. a. Cutbing & Co. — Beririck Ik Smitli 

Norwood Mmi. D.8.A. 



How is the social surplus of an epoch transformed 
into permanent conditions and mental traits ? 

Does progress start from a deficit, or from a 
surplus ? 

Does genius come by additions, or by differen- 
tiation ? 

Does education improve natural or acquired char- 
acters ? 

Does reform come by strengthening the strong, or 
by helping the weak ? 



" A GREAT laAvyer, statesman, and philosopher of a 
former age — I mean Francis Bacon — said that truth 
came out of error much more rapidly than it came out of 
confusion. There is a wonderful truth in that saying. 
Next to being right in the world, the best of all things is 
to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come 
out somewhere. If you go buzzing about between right 
and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come out no- 
where ; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and 
persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have the 
extreme good fortune of knocking your head against a 
fact, and that sets you straight again." — Huxley. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Problem i 

II. The Method 6 

III. Acquired Characters i6 

IV. Emotion 33 

V. Reduction 49 

VI. Responsiveness 62 

VII. Sensation 77 

VIII. Visualization 91 

IX. A Possibility loi 

X. Devolution. . . . . . . .117 

XL Character 129 

XII. The Inner Organs of Expression . . .140 

XIII. Some Terms 156 

XIV. Education 164 

XV. Reform . i8r 

XVI. The Result 193 



CHAPTER I 

The Problem 

The social surplus is a part of the annual 
produce of nations. It is concretely embodied 
in goods which perish, and must be replaced 
by renewed effort in each epoch. Nature aids 
man freely, but not in increasing ratios. The 
amount of the natural surplus varies, and there 
are resultant periods of plenty and of scarcity ; 
but a static population ever presses against 
this limit, and leaves no room for progress, 
which comes only after conscious effort, and 
brings with it the social surplus. 

Man, in his endeavor to improve his con- 
dition, faces a law of diminishing returns. In 
each epoch the purely natural conditions are a 
little worse than they were in the preceding, 
and society would decline, unless men made 
greater exertions. We picture this in a large 
way when we say that the sun is the source of 
all energy, and that the energy steadily wanes. 



2 Heredity and Social Progress 

We come, however, closer to the real facts when 
we see that the denuding forces of nature act- 
ing on the surface of the earth yearly carry off 
a portion of the soil and deposit it in useless 
places or beneath the sea. It may of course 
be said that these denuding forces make soil as 
well as destroy it ; but the destroying action is 
in the present and the restoring process is in 
the future. In each epoch, therefore, men face 
diminishing natural returns, even though in 
the end, new soils may be added by the up- 
heaval of submerged regions. The ice of the 
glacial epoch, for example, may have added 
much to the fertility of the regions it trans- 
formed; and yet the races of that age must 
have felt that their lot was cast in unpleasant 
lines. 

Since the natural surplus falls off, it cannot 
be a source of social progress. Men must 
meet new conditions under more disadvanta- 
geous conditions, or they must create a social 
surplus which more than balances the increas- 
ing natural deficit. But even with a social 
surplus progress is not safe. The surplus is 
always in perishable goods, which must be 



The Problem 3 

periodically replaced. If all that society gains 
from them is the pleasure of their consump- 
tion, the presence of a surplus may create 
prosperity, give an immediate relief from toil, 
and add much to the fund of current enjoy- 
ment ; but in the end the periodic replacement 
of the surplus ceases through the diminution 
of its resources. To make progress secure, the 
temporary surplus must be transformed into 
permanent conditions or into mental traits. If 
this transformation is not possible, all progress 
is temporary ; if it is possible, then the process 
of its transformation becomes the key to social 
progress. 

The problem is really simpler than I have 
here stated it. While permanent conditions 
may be said to be the peculiar province of the 
economist, and do attract much of his attention, 
yet their scope is limited. In fact, little of 
our material environment has come down from 
the past, — so that no nation survives which 
has relied on its permanent improvements. 
We talk freely about our inherited wealth, 
and yet, great as is the wealth of the leisure 
class, but few of the goods of its members 



4 Heredity and Social Progress 

are as old as themselves. Wealth does not 
endure, but is constantly replaced from the 
annual produce. The real source of progress 
must, therefore, lie in the acquisition of mental 
traits ; even permanent improvements are of 
little avail until a mental trait arises which 
causes them to be appreciated. 

The situation, then, is this : the natural sur- 
plus is steadily decreasing, or at best it merely 
holds its own ; the social surplus is the result 
of conscious effort, which must so arouse men- 
tal traits that natural decreasing returns be- 
come socially increasing returns. How, then, 
is the social surplus, the temporary product of 
annual effort, transformed into mental traits 
that abide and become the basis of subsequent 
progress ? 

This is the problem stated in terms of eco- 
nomics. The same problem arises in biology, 
and, as there stated, is : How can acquired 
characters become natural ? Notice that the 
two questions involve the same points. The 
social surplus is a consciously created prod- 
uct: it is made by effort after men arrive 
at maturity. Economic traits are thus ac- 



The Problem 5 

quired characters. If acquired characters can- 
not be inherited, then the social surplus cannot 
be transformed into mental traits, and endur- 
ing progress is impossible. Biologists have 
not considered the first proposition, " the natu- 
ral surplus is a decreasing one," and they hope 
that through a natural differentiation of germ 
cells an unconscious progress may be contin- 
ued. But if the natural surplus is actually 
decreasing, the natural differentiation will be 
regressive, not progressive. Men must stem a 
naturally adverse tide if they would progress, 
and unless the result of their effort favorably 
affect their descendants progress is hopeless. 
To the solution of this enigma economists as 
well as biologists must turn. It is not a prob- 
lem that lies in any one science for the solu- 
tion of which others must wait. It is the 
essential problem of all science and appears 
in some form in every field. I ask again, 
how is the social surplus transformed into 
permanent conditions and mental traits.? An 
answer will be given in the following pages, 
or at least an endeavor will be made to throw 
some light on it. 



CHAPTER II 

The Method 

In the following discussion several logical 
principles are used as safeguards against error. 
They must be formulated so that the reader 
can determine their validity, or at least grant 
that I have used a consistent method and have 
not made haphazard guesses. 

It is a well-accepted principle that mental 
and physical phenomena are parallel. With- 
out deciding which is the cause and which 
the effect, it is easy to see that the presence 
of a given phenomenon in one field involves 
some expression of it in the other. The fact 
of parallelism having been accepted, classifi- 
cations of differences in the two fields ought 
to be the same. The actual mental differ- 
ences must correspond to, and be an expres- 
sion of, physical differences. So, too, for each 
physical difference there must be some psychic 
expression. 

6 



The Method 7 •' 

I have used this principle to test the validity 
of distinctions as they are made by commonly 
used words in each science. It is too often 
assumed that distinctions correspond to words, 
and that when an array of words has been 
defined, they will be justified by facts in the 
real world. But language has had so long 
and so loose a development that the mere 
presence of words is no evidence of the real- 
ity of the distinctions they represent. Usage 
also gives so broad a meaning to many words 
that they lap over each other in every con- 
ceivable way. They must be pruned to the 
real differences as they exist in the parallelism 
of expression in two related fields. The word 
" emotion," for example, has a great variety of 
meanings. It can be restricted to one only 
when we define it by its physical parallel; for 
since thought and matter are parallel, emotion 
has its exact physical expression. We may 
be sure the word stands for something when 
it is defined in terms of this physical parallel. 
We can be sure of nothing if usage and cus- 
tom alone are relied on. 

This method of defining may err in unduly 



8 Heredity aiid Social Progress 

simplifying the field, but it is an effective 
remedy for loose language, and the distinctions 
it permits will have a reality back of them. I 
have used this test in defining terms and 
believe it is the only one that suffices to eject 
the superfluous. The size of dictionaries is 
partly responsible for loose thinking. 

The parallelism of mind and matter is not 
the only one of which use has been made. I 
have assumed that there is a similar parallel 
between economics and biology, using these 
terms in a broad way as a study of the environ- 
ment and of life. If the environment and the 
environed organism are adjusted, the peculiari- 
ties of the organism must correspond to those 
of the environment. To meet each difference 
in the environment some peculiarity in the 
organism will have developed to fit it to the 
situation. The distinctions in organisms run 
parallel to those in the environment, and those 
of the one may be expressed in terms of the 
other. It should be possible, therefore, to find 
real economic differences by checking against 
lists of corresponding differences in the organ- 
isms adjusted to these situations, and to test 



The Method 9 

the reality of biologic terms by looking for 
their expression in terms of the environment. 
This method, again, would give us not only 
simplicity, but validity, and would dispose of 
the mass of useless distinctions that crowd 
both sciences. 

The economist establishes laws by observing 
the use by the individual or by society of con- 
crete goods ; while the biologist studies similar 
relations through the organism which utilizes 
the goods. Economics implies a conscious 
economy, and is perhaps too narrow for an 
inclusive classification. The term " ecology " 
has been suggested, and perhaps it makes a 
clearer analysis. It is not for words that I 
contend, but for the identity of the phenomena. 
There should be a science of the environment 
as a source of nutriment and protection to 
animal life whose distinctions should parallel 
those of biology. 

Using these parallels of expression, many 
aids are obtained in transforming secondary 
into primary laws. Secondary laws are based 
on the observed facts in a single field. They 
are raised to primary laws by extending their 



lO Heredity and Social Progress 

scope so that many independent inductions are 
summed up in one law. Facts of no promi- 
nence in one science become important as soon 
as they are perceived to express in a new way 
the generalizations in another field. What has 
the falling of an apple to do with the move- 
ments of the moon } Nothing until the two 
are known to be expressions of the same law. 
When a generalization in one science acquires 
the position of a secondary law, if expressions 
of the same law can be found in the parallel 
science, there is firm ground for believing 
that the generalization can be elevated to a 
primary law. The parallelism of the expres- 
sion is the best evidence that really elementary 
principles have been reached. When, for ex- 
ample, I perceived that emotion is destructive 
of tissue and tends toward simplicity, I sought 
in biology some expression of the same process, 
and found the reduction in connection with 
germ cells — the same phenomenon in a very 
different form. I assumed that these inde- 
pendent facts are expressions of a primary law 
of far wider reach than the generalizations 
about them made in either science. In this 



The Method ii 

way seemingly incomplete generalizations are 
raised to a higher rank and given a validity 
that a multitude of facts in one field would not 
insure them. I do not mean to assert that 
this method may not lead to error, but I do 
claim that it is legitimate and will eliminate 
the errors into which deductive reasoning 
sinks. In every case where this method has 
been used I have sought for parallel expres- 
sions, and finding them, have assumed that I 
was on the track of a general law which ought 
to be formulated. The value of facts is thereby 
raised and laws are thrown into a more general 
form than if a purely inductive method were 
followed. Grant that the theory of parallelism 
is correct, and the broader generalizations will 
at least deserve consideration. They are not 
the result of a guess, but of a method persisted 
in through a long period. 

The following rules are applications of this 
method and efificient checks to error : — 

1. A principle cannot be accepted as the 
basis of a working hypothesis until at least 
one instance of its action is known. 

2. The presumption is against an explana- 



12 Heredity and Social Progress 

tion that demands a new principle instead of 
one that is known to be active in other cases. 

3. Not until an old principle fails to explain 
all cases brought under it is it legitimate to 
introduce a new principle. 

4. A basis of explanation in a known prin- 
ciple is more valid than an explanation in- 
volving an unknown principle. 

5. If a few elements are repeatedly used to 
make a complex organism, it is highly prob- 
able that all possible combinations have already 
been made, and therefore it is also probable 
that instances of every combination are in 
existence or have existed. The presumption 
of a general law is in favor of a hypothesis as 
soon as single instances of its operation are 
discovered. 

6. Links missing in the verification of a 
chain of reasoning do not render a hypothe- 
sis improbable. 

7. The principle of chance must never be 
admitted. 

8. Whenever a specific form is found, varia- 
tions from this form may be assumed. This is 
involved in the theor}' of evolution by which 



The Method 13 

constant changes are made from one form to 
others. 

9. A law having parallel expressions in two 
fields has greater validity than a complete in- 
duction in one field. 

10. If the causes of present changes are 
sufficient to account for past changes, they 
should also be accepted for the latter. 

There is in this last rule an importance 
not at first apparent. The principle of paral- 
lelism is well illustrated by the relation of 
geography to geology. Geography is a study 
of the earth as it is, including all its present 
changes. Geology is a study of it as it has 
developed through successive stages. Geology 
is thus a long series of past geographies. 
There were no forces at work in any of 
them that are not now active. Forces may, 
it is true, be obscure and subordinate at the 
present time, but they are here, and it is 
through their study that the great changes 
of the past are made manifest. We have 
few glaciers, but it is through them that the 
puzzles of the glacial epoch were solved. 
The denuding forces of air and water seem 



14 Heredity and Social Progress 

slight, but it is through their agencies, acting 
perhaps no more rapidly than at present, that 
great mountain ranges were lowered. The 
present changes throw light on the past, and 
the study of former changes is necessary to a 
knowledge of the present. It has been hap- 
pily said, " Geology is the study of the past 
in the light of the present, while geography 
is a study of the present in the light of the 
past." 

Do we not observe the same relations be- 
tween biology and economics.-* The more 
elementary forms of life and the lower ani- 
mals may be said to be the past of human 
evolution as geology is the past of physical 
evolution. Each organism was a changing 
being and then became a fixed type. Man, 
however, is changing; all the forces that have 
ever been at work on organisms are still at 
work on him. He has upbuilding forces and 
denuding forces ; they may be studied in ac- 
tual operation just as the changes due to natu- 
ral forces may still be studied in geography. 

The laws of human evolution are the laws 
of natural evolution, and the order of its 



The Method 15 

changes is the order of nature. It is a false 
assumption which forces the categories of 
animal life on human life and attempts to 
explain the latter by the former. Human life 
is conscious life, and human progress is con- 
scious progress. In every field of endeavor, 
conscious acts precede those which are un- 
conscious ; consciously acquired character is 
the antecedent of the natural character. If 
our logical canon is correct, this order is 
the order of nature, and lower life passes 
through the same stages when it is in mo- 
bile evolution. I would therefore raise the 
inductions concerning human life into pri- 
mary laws and afifirm that its principles are 
of general application. What is happening 
has happened, and the course of its happening 
is the course of all happenings. Vital forces 
are to-day what they always have been, and 
it is a false premise which assumes that past 
changes were due to forces now extinct or 
of so little potency that the natural order of 
progress is changed. 



CHAPTER III 

Acquired Characters 

The simplest and most obvious theory of 
heredity is that of growth through use and of 
organic change through the accumulated effects 
of use. It is plain that activity causes organs 
to grow. The laborer acquires additional 
strength by using his arms or his hands to do 
a particular sort of work. Those who walk 
regularly find that they can go farther than 
before the regular exercise began. Blacksmiths 
have strong arms, musicians have dexterous 
fingers, and porters have strong legs and 
backs. It is not necessary to give extended 
examples of what every one knows. Even the 
crudest observations verify the law that use pre- 
cedes and is the cause of growth and change. 

Differences of opinion, however, arise when 
it is asserted that these organs, developed 
through use, are inherited by descendants in 
their improved form. There can, of course, 

i6 



Acquired Characters 17 

be no doubt that children resemble their par- 
ents, but do they resemble parents in those 
characters which have been modified by use? 
The answer will depend upon the observer. If 
he thinks of the general adjustment of each 
race to its special environment, he perceives 
that it has developed those qualities, aptitudes, 
and traits that are of special use in that environ- 
ment. It would seem, therefore, from this gen- 
eral resemblance of son to father, that the 
qualities of the father have reappeared in the 
son; but how this has been done remains 
unanswered. Selection may have displaced 
those not inheriting the useful modifications, 
or the organism of the child may have been 
directly modified by the changes that took 
place in the parent. 

Although there is little direct evidence to 
support either theory, there is indirect evidence 
which seems decisive. If children inherited 
the acquired qualities of parents, they would 
naturally and cheerfully do those acts and 
establish those relations that the parents have 
found useful in their struggle for survival. 
Parents have to teach children what they have 



1 8 Heredity and Social Progress 

found useful ; they must put pressure on chil- 
dren to make them accept their own avocation 
and mental attitude ; the standards and habits 
of each generation must be instilled into the 
succeeding generation. Every stable race is 
careful to impress on the young its habits, 
standards, and moral code. Surely this would 
not be necessary if every modification in the 
parent were directly inherited by the child. 
The experience of the race seems to negative 
the idea of the ready inheritance of acquired 
characters, and to affirm that they do, in some 
way, become natural characters. If not by 
direct descent, where, then, is the road.-* 

Let us follow the process of acquisition 
more carefully, and perhaps its method will 
become more obvious. Some of the indi- 
viduals in a given environment perceive that 
a new process or a new mode of adjustment, 
demanding, we will assume, a stronger arm or 
a firmer grasp, will give them an advantage 
or offer a greater return. The process, often 
repeated, develops the muscles of the arm and 
causes a larger return, let us say, of wheat, to 
be produced. After this fact is discovered by 



Acquired Characters 19 

individuals, others, seeing that an advantage 
is derived, will imitate the deeds of the in- 
ventors and acquire the stronger arms due 
to increased use. Imitation will cause this 
habit to spread and will keep in the commu- 
nity the people who see the advantage of the 
acquired character, and through use voluntarily 
develop it. Children will also, through the 
example of parents, submit to the discipline 
needed to develop it, and thus it will be handed 
down from generation to generation as an 
acquired character. But not all the members 
of the community, and especially not all the 
children, will submit to the needed discipline, 
but will follow their natural inclinations and 
act in ways that do not develop the needed 
character. As a result they suffer from the 
lack of those articles of food obtained by its 
means. To coerce them, and especially to 
prevent children from suffering the conse- 
quences of following their natural bent, moral 
rules and local customs are devised which 
force on all members of the community the ac- 
quisition of traits and characters that, in the 
opinion of the majority, are necessary toward 



20 Heredity and Social Progress 

well-being. In some such way the discov- 
eries and inventions of the few are extended 
and their use is enforced, until the whole com- 
munity, acting in harmony with the local code 
and moral tradition, acquires and keeps the 
characters demanded for the best utilization of 
the environment. Many acquired characters are 
handed down from generation to generation, a 
fact in proof that acquired characters are not 
of necessity inherited. If they were, the great 
mass of customs, habits, and local traditions 
would not be needed, society would be organ- 
ized on a simple basis, and every son would 
do naturally that which the father did through 
effort. When, therefore, an improvement is 
made, the whole community is fastened to the 
environment by a conscious process which 
imposes the new activity upon all, and prevents 
any one from utilizing surrounding conditions 
in a less effective way than that prescribed 
by the more efficient. The new conditions 
are generalized and perpetuated by methods 
which show that acquired characters are not 
of necessity transformed into natural charac- 
ters. Certainly social customs are not based 



Acquired Characters 21 

on this thought; naturalness has some other 
source. 

If characters acquired by use are not directly 
inherited, a clew to the acquisition of natural 
characters may be obtained by a study of the 
changed relations of parent and child, brought 
about by the parents' acquired characters. We 
know that acquired characters have an eco- 
nomic use and permit a surer or a more abun- 
dant supply of economic goods, whereby the 
food is improved or new methods of obtaining 
it are devised ; or perhaps some method of 
defence is invented by which the situation may 
be better utilized than before. Certainly no 
action would be persisted in long enough to 
make it an acquired character, either of an 
individual or of a community, unless it gave a 
decisive advantage to its possessors. It may, 
therefore, be assumed that the new character 
gives to its possessors more food, leisure, or 
protection, and that some of these advantages 
will be shared by their children, who will have 
better food and a longer period of childhood 
in which to develop their natural qualities. 
While some parents might use the acquired 



2 2 Heredity and Social Progress 

character solely for their own advantage, not 
only would the majority share it with their 
children, but social custom and morality would 
force them to admit their children to some of 
its advantages. What changes, then, would 
this better food and longer childhood effect in 
the new generation ? An increased nutrition 
creates more energy, and this energy will be 
used to develop the natural qualities more fully 
than earlier conditions permitted. A longer 
childhood will have the same effect. Chil- 
dren play instead of work, and the incipient 
qualities which might fail to develop in a 
shorter childhood would now become promi- 
nent characters and elements in determining 
the activities of the child. When this child, 
becoming a man, chooses his vocation, he will 
not accept the discipline or the occupation of 
his father, or so live as to develop his acquired 
characters. The old discipline will be dis- 
tasteful to him in proportion as his increased 
energy and longer period of childhood have 
differentiated his inclinations from those of 
the parent. He will, therefore, have a strong 
impetus to move into a new world or to seek 



Acquired Characters 23 

at home a new occupation in which his natural 
characters will be more effective than in the 
old. 

When, for example, a bricklayer has improved 
his condition by the acquired characters of his 
occupation, and has, as a consequence, bet- 
tered the position of his children, they tend 
to become clerks and mechanics ; the sons of 
mechanics become storekeepers, foremen, and 
superintendents, while the children of farmers 
become business men, lawyers, and clergymen. 
It is well known that the children of any class 
move into the class above them when the eco- 
nomic welfare of parents is so improved that 
children have more food, shelter, and leisure. 
This means that natural inclinations and more 
energy are used to break from the routine of 
parents and to enter occupations where the 
new energy and the stronger natural inclina- 
tions count for more in the success of the 
undertaking. There is a movement of popu- 
lation with every increase of energy, and with 
every opportunity to develop the inherent 
qualities born in men. 

If this well-known tendency be formulated 



24 Hej'edity and Social Progress 

into a general law, it will be this : acquired 
characters are not inherited, but the improved 
situation of parents who acquire characters 
gives to their children more vitality and 
better opportunities to develop their natural 
qualities, and results in new qualities which 
the children utilize by a change of occupa- 
tion or environment. In short, every acquired 
quality increases energy, and the additional 
energy starts a movement toward a new envi- 
ronment. Putting this fact in another way, 
it may be said that present environments do 
not make the qualities of those who live in 
them, but that people seek these environments 
because they have the characters necessary 
to their utilization. Qualities are an index of 
energy, and energy determines the environ- 
ment that a man seeks. The adjustment to it 
is not the cause of the qualities, but a result 
of their presence. What men have of natural 
character, they acquired in some other environ- 
ment. Acquired characters only are the result 
of present conditions, and when they have had 
their proper effect in the increase of energy, 
another shifting of environments results, by 



Acquired Characters 25 

which the new natural characters will find a 
place and be the means of a new increase of 
energy and another shifting of environments. 
This principle, broader than human society, 
is a general law, and is recognized in biology 
under the head of secondary sexual qualities. 
Darwin assumes that the peculiar characters of 
males are due to the contests of rival males or 
to sexual selection caused by females choosing 
those males in whom the qualities are most 
prominent. Geddes and Thompson,^ however, 
point out that these secondary qualities are 
expressions of a natural characteristic of male 
animals. The males are more katabolic than 
the females, and from their activity results the 
qualities called secondary. The emphasis is 
thus placed on the natural effect of surplus 
energy, which shows itself more prominently 
in males than in females. If energy expresses 
itself in activity, and activity causes growth, 
there would seem to be no need of other 
explanations for sexual characters of males. 
When males enter into severe contests among 
themselves, their primary characters must be 
1 "The Evolution of Sex," Chap. I. 



26 Heredity and Social Progress 

more fully developed than the mere necessi- 
ties of life demand. The successful contest- 
ant would be the one with the most energy, 
and this energy would also find an outlet 
in changes which create secondary qualities. 
The fighting males would grow; the surplus 
energy speeding in one direction would also 
find exit in the other. Secondary sexual char- 
acters are the natural expression of surplus 
energy created by acquired characters. At 
least they appear under improved conditions 
or when nutrition is superabundant, and are 
naturally associated with surplus energy. They 
suggest a way in which surplus energy can 
effect organic changes in harmony with well- 
demonstrated biological laws. 

If sexual characters are natural expressions 
of surplus energy, they give a clew as to how 
other characters are formed. They seem not 
to be a class by themselves, but to reflect 
the superior vitality of males. Should any of 
these characters prove useful, not merely in 
contest but also in the acquisition of nutriment, 
they would be acquired through inheritance 
by females as well as by males, and so become 



Acquired Characters 27 

necessary characters. It is a well-known fact 
that males are more variable than females and 
that new qualities are usually first acquired by 
them. Females then acquire what has proved 
useful, representing in their progress the net 
results of past development as it is shown 
in inherited structure. The order of the 
change from acquired to natural characters is : 
first, a surplus of energy following acquired 
characters ; second, the expression of this 
energy in the secondary sexual characters of 
the males ; third, the discovery of some use for 
these secondary characters in which the whole 
race or species can participate ; and fourth, 
their appearance through heredity in all indi- 
viduals of the species, whereupon they cease to 
be secondary and become primary characters. 

We note here three kinds of characters — 
primary, acquired, and secondary. The pri- 
mary are those at a given moment necessary to 
the existence of an organism. The acquired 
are those due to individual action, and they are 
propagated by imitation, forethought, or some 
other conscious means. The secondary result 
from the success of the acquired characters in 



28 Heredity a7id Social Progress 

giving nutrition and energy in excess of the 
needs of mere existence and propagation. 
Secondary characters are not necessary to the 
acquisition of energy, but are the natural ex- 
pressions of it when acquired. They often 
prove useful because they permit a change in 
the habits or the environment of organisms; 
and in the new situation, or under the new con- 
ditions, they become as essential to the new form 
of existence as the primary characters were. 
The difference between the two groups of 
characters having now disappeared, they both 
may be classed as primary. In this way 
the number of essential characters may grad- 
ually increase. The non-essentials of a simple 
life become the essentials of the more complex. 
Each new environment tends to develop ac- 
quired characters through which it is better 
utilized, and these become primary by a move- 
ment into a new environment. Use is not the 
cause of characters but a result of their appear- 
ance. It is of course true that most characters 
have a use, but this fact is a consequence of the 
multitude of environments into which organisms 
can go. Any combination of characters may 



Acquired Characters 29 

prove advantageous in struggle if the organ- 
ism possessing it is put in the proper environ- 
ment. 

In harmony with this thought, I would say 
animals do not develop teeth because they eat 
hard food. They eat hard food because they 
have teeth. They do not attain wings because 
they fly; they fly because they have wings. 
They do not develop nails because they 
scratch ; they scratch because they have nails. 
Nor do they develop hair because they go into 
cold regions ; they go north because they have 
hair. By this I mean that the tooth, the nail, 
the wing, the hair, and other specific characters 
appear as secondary qualities, and are at first 
merely expressions of surplus energy. A use 
is found for an organ already in existence 
through other causes, and then by develop- 
ment and selection it becomes an efficient 
instrument. Use does not cause anything; it 
only modifies and improves what other causes 
have already formed. 

The limited extent to which use is avail- 
able in creating organic changes is illustrated 
by what Professor Cope called the doctrine of 



30 Heredity and Social Progress 

the unspecialized.^ The parts most used and 
hence of the greatest importance to animals 
become highly specialized in their mechan- 
ism and restrict activity within fixed limits. 
As a consequence highly specialized animals 
are less versatile and have less power of adopt- 
ing new habits. Within a limited sphere they 
are more efficient in a struggle for existence, 
but are incapable of the large modifications 
that a radical change in environment necessi- 
tates. The highly specialized die out when 
great changes in the environment occur, leaving 
the less specialized types which alone are ca- 
pable of enough modification to meet the new 
situation. There is no connection between the 
highest representative of one type and the low- 
est of another. It is the lower and less spe- 
cialized forms of each that are closely related, 
and the line of progress to other types is from 
the less specialized of each type. Use has cre- 
ated many automatic habits, but these have little 
power of adaptation to new conditions. Per- 
fection in one direction is not the parent of 
future progress in another. The new develop- 

^ " The Origin of the Fittest," p. 398. 



Acquired Characters 31 

ment starts from some unspecialized part and 
follows a path divergent from earlier develop- 
ments. Use creates energy, but the energy 
must act on an undifferentiated part capable of 
development in several directions. Use thus 
has an effect, but it ends in the elimination 
of its product. Great clianges are antagonis- 
tic to the specialization that has gone before. 
We must therefore look to the surplus energy 
which use creates, and not to its direct effects, 
when we seek to account for the enduring and 
uplifting changes in organisms. 

SUMMARY 

1. The fact that children do not naturally and cheerfully 
perform the acts which have become habitual to parents 
indicates that acquired characters are not directly inherited. 

2. If the acquired characters were inherited, the great 
mass of social customs, habits, and traditions would be 
unnecessary. 

3. Acquired characters secure a better economic support 
which improves the condition of children. They can now 
act more naturally than the parents did, and evoke qualities 
that lay dormant in the parents. Acquired characters also 
increase energy, and the new energy is utilized by a move- 
ment into a new environment. 

4. Secondary characters are the natural expression of the 
surplus energy which the primary characters create. 



32 Heredity and Social Progress 

5. The order of the change from acquired to natural 
characters is : first, the production of surplus energy through 
acquired characters ; second, the expression of this energy 
in the secondary characters ; third, the discovery of some 
use for these secondary characters in which all the species 
can share, and then the movement of the species into an 
environment where these secondary characters are necessary 
and hence primary. 



CHAPTER IV 

Emotion 

An environment is natural when the external 
conditions and the natural impulses harmonize. 
Acts are then so adjusted to conditions that 
what is natural is also useful. Yet if the pre- 
ceding argument is correct, usefulness is a re- 
sult of naturalness and not its cause. The 
acquired characters of one environment create 
surplus energy which evokes new natural char- 
acters, and these cause the descendants of those 
who acquire them to leave the present environ- 
ment, and enter one where the new characters 
are advantageous. Usefulness, therefore, fol- 
lows naturalness, and is the test through which 
the possibility of permanent natural relations 
between organisms and environment is de- 
termined. 

No tendency to leave this natural environ- 
ment arises, except through the acquisition of a 
new group of characters creating new energy 

D 33 



34 Heredity and Social Progress 

and thus developing new characters that make 
the relations to existing conditions inharmoni- 
ous. The being will then seek another en- 
vironment where its characters will be natural 
to the situation. But a natural environment 
will not at first make the need of new char- 
acters evident, for harmony breeds content. 
The tendency, therefore, will be for a static 
condition to ensue until an increase of numbers 
brings on a struggle between those whose 
natural adjustment is so marked that removal 
is difficult. Struggle is between the adjusted; 
the non-adjusted are mobile enough to seek 
other locations or to acquire other habits. 

When naturalness and adjustment create 
static conditions, a new factor enters. Over- 
population causes a deficit which brings about 
elimination. The force generated by acquired 
characters is a surplus energy that increases 
the number of natural characters. In a natural 
environment it expends itself in struggle, and 
leads to the elimination of those beings whose 
energies are not centred upon themselves. 
There is thus a tendency to reduce the number 
of characters and to bring the remainder to the 



Emotion 35 

maximum of efficiency. Elimination does not 
create characters. It selects them and holds a 
race or species to its maximum efficiency. It 
thus causes an economy of structure and 
energy by means of which the chances of survi- 
val are augmented. Economy specializes but 
does not develop. There is no force in elimi- 
nation that adds to the number of characters 
or increases their effectiveness. Elimination 
thus dwarfs some characters and specializes 
others. These two effects are the natural re- 
sults of struggle which must be checked before 
new characters are developed, and a tendency 
arises to move into other environments where 
they are of use, and thus become effective. 

This dwarfing of non-essential parts is partly, 
or perhaps entirely, due to the indirect effects 
of struggle : it may be with one's own kind, 
as the struggle between those of a single race, 
or it may be with other species, as the opposi- 
tion between the hawk and the birds on which 
it feeds. On the other hand, the development 
that increases structure and improves organs 
springs from the steady, constant relations to 
the favorable elements in the environment. 



36 Heredity and Social Progress 

The constant repetition of useful acts creates 
structure and organs that respond instinctively 
to the situations for which they are functionally 
fitted. The sum of constantly favorable ele- 
ments in the environment fixes the amount of 
structure and the effectiveness of the organs 
that can develop in a given situation. There 
is a tendency for organs to reach this efiBciency, 
and for structure to create instinctive responses 
to all constant relations between organisms and 
the environment. Upon the introduction of 
adverse elements, a less complete adjustment 
results, or if the more complete adjustment is 
acquired before the adverse element enters, a 
retrogression occurs. Organs lose efficiency, 
and structure disappears, or is dwarfed until 
a new equilibrium is attained in which the 
adverse element either becomes a part of the 
environment or some means is acquired of 
guarding against it. 

To meet this situation, a feeling is generated 
that in some form is present when struggle 
with adverse elements is necessary. Instinct 
is the agent which best utilizes favorable ele- 
ments, and it grows as these elements become 



Emotion 2>7 

constant; emotion is the agent which counters 
unfavorable elements, and it increases with the 
violence of the struggle. Instinct acts through 
structure, while emotion acts against it. If 
this plain contrast is kept in mind, the simpler 
acts and feelings may be classified and general 
laws be stated in a way that will simplify many 
of the relations between the organs of expres- 
sion and of action. There is structure which 
works so mechanically and instinctively that 
conscious action is unnecessary. Adverse ele- 
ments cannot create structure ; they destroy 
the necessary favorable relations on which its 
growth depends, and hence make disadvanta- 
geous certain instinctive acts dependent upon 
it. Adjustment cannot be so close or so 
constant if there are unfavorable elements in 
the environment as it could be if they were 
absent. Structure must become less mechani- 
cal, or the mechanical parts must be fewer in 
number. 

When these constant relations develop struc- 
ture, the direction of the flow of energy be- 
comes fixed. Break up this constant relation 
by an adverse element, and emotion appears 



38 Heredity and Social Progress 

which destroys structure and restores the more 
primitive previous condition. An emotion has 
no special structure or mechanism for its own 
expression, but uses structure created for other 
ends. A laugh is expressed by muscles built 
for structural ends, and having uses in the pro- 
cesses of adjustment, while a tear comes from 
a gland originated for other purposes. The 
muscles which express emotion are merely used 
in a new way, or in a different combination 
from that of the instinctive use by which they 
aid adjustment. A strain upon them may 
weaken or destroy some of the structural rela- 
tions that have made them instinctive in 
action. Emotion, then, destroys or makes a 
waste which, if repeated, finally ends in throw- 
ing the organism back into a more primitive 
condition with poorer adjustment and fewer 
organs and mechanisms. 

These statements do not differ so much as 
would at first appear from current views. Pro- 
fessor James tells us that there are " no special 
brain centres for emotion,"^ which indicates 
that the emotions start in centres and follow 

1 '• Psychology," Vol. II., Chap. XXV, 



Emotion 39 

paths created for other ends. His theory of 
the emotions is that " the bodily changes follow 
directly the perception of the exciting fact, and 
that our feeling of the same changes as they 
occur is the emotion." If the bodily states did 
not follow the perception, there would be no 
feeling beyond the ordinary sensations which 
accompany perceptions. When bodily changes 
are felt they create the emotion. This state- 
ment of facts harmonizes with my view, but 
the terms must be made more definite. For 
" exciting fact " we must put adverse elements, 
because they alone create emotions. Favor- 
able elements acting through structure seldom 
come into consciousness with enough force to 
cause emotion. Emotion is due to the unex- 
pected event that causes a flow of energy in 
new channels. This outgo of energy is not 
the emotion, but emotion is its destructive 
effects upon the mechanical relations that have 
grown up between the organism and the con- 
stant elements of the environment. The vaso- 
motor system, ordinarily involved in carrying 
off waste products and in replacing devitalized 
structure, is now excited and its increased 



40 Heredity mid Social Progress 

activity is the main element in the emotion 
that follows the unexpected discharge of sur- 
plus energy. 

The voluntary muscles are not strongly 
affected by emotions. The will has a firm 
control over them, and hence they are to a less 
degree the channels along which the unex- 
pected output of energy goes. If they are 
affected, it is by some sympathetic movement 
outside of conscious control causing a combi- 
nation of movements not in harmony with the 
regular activity of the muscles involved. Her- 
bert Spencer asserts that emotion affects the 
muscles in an inverse ratio to their mass and 
to the weight of the parts they have to move.^ 
They act first on the muscles of the voice and 
face, and gradually extend to the arms, legs, and 
body. Mantegazza ^ says they begin in the 
face and extend to the neck, arms, hands, 
trunk, and lower limbs. These statements 
express the general fact that the voluntary 
muscles, being most under the control of the 
will, are least affected and come under the 

1 " Principles of Psychology," Vol. II., p. 542. 
^ " Physiognomy and Expression," p. 258. 



Emotion 41 

influence of emotion only as it increases in 
strength. Mantegazza also says that all expres- 
sion is defensive/ and in another place that 
emotion is defensive or sympathetic. The two 
statements are not out of harmony. The 
defensive expression is the more elementary 
when the danger affects the individual directly. 
When an interest in other individuals is 
acquired, their dangers and suffering arouse 
sympathy and excite the same or a stronger 
emotion than if the danger threatened one's 
own person. Emotion in either case arises 
from contact with adverse elements, and in its 
primary effects is destructive of fixed reactions. 
Ribot^ regards the emotions as a case of an 
arrest of development. The parts of a living 
being are so closely related that a change in 
one involves also changes in other parts. 
Every unexpected action throws a stress on 
some part not structurally developed to sustain 
it. The ensuing loss weakens the overtaxed 
part and leaves relatively stronger other organs 
whose functions are normal. A change of pro- 

1 Loc. cit., p. 82. 

2 K Psychology of the Emotions," p. 264. 



42 Heredity and Social Progress 

portion follows and the organism is modified to 
meet the situation. 

This arrest of development seems to me to 
be the most important fact relative to the emo- 
tions. If the primary effect of emotion is to 
dwarf structure, it is perhaps the sole cause of 
the change in organisms when under the stress 
of struggle. The principle of natural selection 
assumes that struggle causes starvation and 
disease whereby the weak are eliminated. If 
emotion dwarfs and arrests development, the 
same effects could be brought about much 
more readily and quickly by it than by natural 
selection. The dwarfed parts would give new 
proportions to the body and make it less fit for 
the existing environment ; but by a movement 
to a new environment, a place could be found 
where the new qualities and functions would 
be useful. Emotion thus injures the static, 
but aids those mobile enough to seek new sit- 
uations where the new combination of quali- 
ties are sources of strength. When deer are 
attacked by lions, if some were killed the elimi- 
nation would create change through natural 
selection. But the emotion caused by the 



Emotion 43 

attack would act on the living and impel them 
to alter their habits and also to change their 
situation and perhaps their food as well. The 
whole herd would be affected by the emotion 
and by the arrest of development that follows. 
A quick adjustment to new conditions would 
follow long before natural selection would have 
time to act. It is said that the elimination of 
the weak would leave the stronger, and thus 
cause a development in them. But the survi- 
vors get an emotion, not a new character. 
They are modified by it and must shift to 
a new environment to find a situation nat- 
ural to their new condition. If the only 
effects of starvation, disease, or destruction — 
the means through which natural selection acts 
— were on those killed, we might assume that 
the survivors were improved. But where dis- 
ease or starvation kills one, it injures hundreds 
which live to propagate their kind, and for 
one animal that a beast of prey seizes, a score 
are shocked by the incident and live on with 
new emotions. Starvation and disease always 
leave the survivors on a lower level, where they 
become more emotional. Any great national 



44 Heredily and Social Progress 

disaster checks progress and leaves a heritage 
of emotional products that are seldom removed. 
Facts of this kind are plain enough when 
human society is under observation. No one 
would expect an epidemic of small-pox or of 
cholera to raise tlie intellectual level of a 
nation, nor do i)eop]e seek for famines or social 
disorder to elevate mankind. The same injury 
of the living would be observed if the effects of 
the destruction caused by beasts of prey could 
be accurately ascertained. In the case of ani- 
mals we see, not the immediate effect of the 
first onslaughts, but the slowly wrought adjust- 
ment between the weak and the strong. The 
victims have changed environments many times 
to avoid death, and the readjustments between 
their changed organs and their new habitats 
have often proved advantageous. There may, 
therefore, be an improvement in the long run, 
and yet the emotion which arrested develop- 
ment and impelled each change may have been 
injurious if judged from the standpoint of the 
present. There would in each case be a dwarf- 
ing and a changed relation of parts, and then a 
growth with these proportions, if the shifting 



Emotion 45 

of environment proved advantageous. The 
new animal might be larger than the old, and 
yet the initial effect of the emotion forcing the 
change might be dwarfing. 

Struggle thus breeds emotion, not strength. 
Wherever it has long prevailed, emotion is 
the dominant force in fixing social or animal 
relations. In an old, established environment, 
people are not strong, rational, and inventive. 
The hard-pressed races are emotional. They 
believe in chance and luck, and their acts are 
detrimental to their adjustment. The test 
of the presence of emotion is the irrationality 
of action. Of acts that arc nearly alike in 
their effects, the one will be done and the 
other avoided. There is thus a narrowing 
of voluntary deeds, and marked limits are put 
on choice and consumption. If these are 
tests of emotion, all hard-pressed animals 
show by their acts that they are highly emo- 
tional. They narrow their choices, limit the 
range of their food, and act on arbitrary signs 
of the presence of enemies or dangers. In- 
stead of being forced down to the limit of 
population by starvation or disease, they nar- 



46 Heredity and Social Progress 

row their food or activities and thus bring on 
an arbitrary elimination that does not make 
for progress. A stationary condition results, 
and a type is formed that in animals becomes 
a fixed species. 

In the creation of a species, two forces are 
needed: one that shall involve the principle of 
variation and cause animals to break out of 
their restraints and to adjust themselves to 
new conditions ; and at the same time a second 
is needed which cuts off further change and 
drives them back toward their primitive con- 
dition. Progress is due to surplus energy ; 
retrogression or an arrest of development 
comes from emotions. These two forces ac- 
count for the changes through which organ- 
isms go, and as they act more quickly than 
natural selection, they are more likely than it 
is to be the actual causes of organic changes. 

In saying that emotions are defensive, sym- 
pathetic, and the cause of arrested develop- 
ment, I seem to have overlooked one important 
class, the sexual emotions. They are pleasur- 
able and do not come from adverse elements 
in the environment. Although this may be 



Emotion 47 

readily admitted, yet they are in the same 
general class with adverse elements. Growth 
and reproduction are antithetical. Reproduc- 
tion does not take place while growth is 
vigorous. There is an arrest of development 
as soon as reproduction begins. The feelings 
due to reproduction, although pleasurable, act 
on the structural and functional parts of the 
body arising out of external adjustment, just 
as adverse elements af¥ect them. External 
adjustment is less complete than it would be 
if the needs of reproduction did not make 
themselves felt. Reproduction dwarfs in the 
same way that the excitement of sudden at- 
tacks dwarfs. If sexual emotions are in the 
long run beneficial, it is through their indirect 
effects in forcing changes of environments. 

SUMMARY 

1. In a natural environment the external conditions and 
the natural impulses harmonize. Characters arise from 
increased energy. Beings then seek new environments 
where their natural impulses have more opportunity to 
develop and to become useful. 

2. Struggle indicates the presence of adverse elements 
in the environment. Growth is determined by the steady 



48 Heredity and Social Progress 

favorable relations in the environment. Adverse elements 
act against structure and throw the organism back into a 
more simple undifferentiated state. 

3. Instinct is the psychic expression of the favorable 
elements that act through structure. Emotion is a like 
expression of the unfavorable elements that antagonize 
growth. Instinct acts through structure and emotion 
against it. 

4. Emotions have no structure or mechanism of their 
own by which they are expressed. They use structure 
created for other ends. Emotions are thus primarily 
destructive, create waste products, and force organisms 
back to a more primitive state with fewer structural ad- 
justments to the environment. 

5. Natural selection assumes that improvement is 
wrought out by the elimination of the weak. If, however, 
emotions arrest development, the changes in organisms 
needed for adjustment can be effected more readily and 
quickly by them than by natural selection. Struggle breeds 
emotion, not strength. It lowers the tone and throws 
beings back into more primitive organic conditions. It 
cannot, therefore, be the cause of the improvements that 
are attributed to natural selection. 



CHAPTER V 

Reduction 

In the study of reproduction a process has 
been observed to which the name " reduction " 
is given. As a necessary step to the reception 
of the male germ, the egg before fertihzation 
throws off two small parts called polar bodies. 
The first of these, according to Professor 
Weismann, represents the separation from the 
nucleus of the ovogenetic nuclear substance, 
and the second is a real division of the cell, 
by which one-half of the essential elements of 
the nucleus, called chromosomes, are ejected. 
The egg is thus made ready for the recep- 
tion of the sperm, and, through the union, the 
nucleus is restored to its original number of 
chromosomes and made capable of independ- 
ent life. 

The formation of polar bodies is evidently 
a process of cell division observed under con- 
ditions incident to reproduction. The question 

E 49 



50 Heredity and Social Progress 

naturally arises whether it is a phenomenon of 
reproduction alone or whether this formation 
may not be a general characteristic of cell 
division. The ease with which the stages in- 
cident to reproduction may be observed, the 
simplicity of the conditions, and the interest 
in the problem naturally make it a starting- 
point of these investigations. But what is 
here true, may also be true of other forms of 
cell division. Two facts appear that seem to 
have a general significance. In the first place, 
the specialization or transformation due to the 
retention of the Qgg in the mother organism 
can be thrown off and the ^gg brought back 
to its original state. This is the reason for 
the emission of the first polar body.^ In the 
second place, there can be an actual division 
of the Q^gg so that it loses some of the parts 
necessary for a complete existence. The claim 
has been made that the Qgg loses its centro- 
some by the emission of the second polar 
body, and that the replacement of this neces- 
sary part is made possible by the union with 
the male germ. A polar body would then be 

^ Weismann, " Essays on Heredity," p. 351. 



Reduction 5 1 

the centrosome of an earlier division retained 
by the tension of the envelope. If there were 
no envelope, the separation of the polar body 
from the reorganized cell would quickly take 
place and the new cell would have all the 
characters of the old, and its general or un- 
specialized powers. But where growth domi- 
nates over reproduction, the envelope receives 
a relatively large share of the nutriment, and 
is thus enabled to exert a greater pressure on 
the contents of the cell. Its internal changes 
are retarded or prevented, and the polar 
body is held captive until some change per- 
mits its escape. When the period of repro- 
duction arrives, growth is no longer dominant 
and the envelope is relatively weaker than 
the forces making for reproduction. The t^^ 
before the emission of the polar bodies has 
gone through some of the changes that all 
somatic cells undergo. In retracing its steps, 
it throws off its epigenetic development and 
comes back to its original state. If other 
cells could be put through the same process, 
they would in a like manner throw off their 
complexities and be regenerated. Of this there 



52 Heredity and Social Progress 

are many instances, for regeneration is a com- 
mon phenomenon among lower animals, and 
is in some degree found in all organisms. 
When an animal replaces a lost limb, a pro- 
cess of reduction takes place by which the 
cells adjoining the lost part are brought back 
to the degree of simplicity of the original cells 
before the growth of the part began. Reduc- 
tion always precedes regeneration. If the 
changes in the cells which create the new 
part could be observed, reductions would be 
found similar to those that take place when 
polar bodies are expelled. In reproduction, 
cells are simplified by the throwing off of 
polar bodies, and subsequently their natural 
growth re-creates the lost part. Reproduction 
and the regeneration of lost parts are not differ- 
ent processes, but spring from the same forces 
acting under slightly different conditions. 

Carrying this reasoning a step farther, an- 
other group of facts may be correlated with 
those just given. Emotions are the psychic 
expression of certain bodily changes, and 
represent the effects on organisms of the per- 
ception of adverse elements in the environ- 



Reduction 5 3 

ment. Emotions are adverse to specialization 
and their first effects are destructive to the parts 
affected. If they are adverse to growth, they 
tend, by weakening the vegetative forces, to favor 
those that end in reproduction. This thought 
leads me to assume that reduction is the physi- 
ologic expression of facts, the psychic expres- 
sion of which is emotion ; in other words 
if the psychic feeling could be measured 
when a reduction takes place, it would 
appear in consciousness as an emotion, and 
if the physiologic changes that accompany 
emotions could be observed, they would be 
found to be reductions. To put the same 
facts in still another way, emotions and re- 
ductions are both due to shocks which dis- 
turb the rhythm of organisms, and, in their 
disturbance, the specialized parts suffer most 
and are often severed from the organism and 
ejected as polar bodies. 

These facts are difficult to verify because 
the reductions that can be readily observed 
are in simple organisms of whose psychic 
states we know little, while the emotions we 
could measure are in beings so complex that 



54 Heredity and Social Progress 

reductions, if they do occur there, would be 
hard to locate. And yet the two are not 
different in kind ; moreover if they are both 
antagonistic to growth, they might find expres- 
sion by the same means. The emotions have 
no organs ; the currents they excite move over 
routes created for other ends, and if so, the 
effects must also be such as other causes 
create. It seems likely, therefore, that the 
emotions would use the nerves as a means 
of dispersion and then induce changes in 
the parts affected like those that would hap- 
pen if growth were retarded or the envelope 
were weakened. The first effects of an emo- 
tion, then, would be a reduction ending in 
an expulsion of polar bodies and the reduc- 
tion of the cells to a simple condition. Being 
less somatic they are now capable of fresh 
growth or of such changes as the new condi- 
tions demand. Regeneration follows reduc- 
tion, causing a fresh growth of the organism 
in some new direction. This new growth is 
determined by the forces then active, and it 
is more or less, as a greater or smaller part 
of the existing nutriment is set aside for this 



Reduction 55 

end. The part may be dwarfed or it may 
be enlarged, but it will at least be altered. 
Emotion is thus a cause of bodily change, and 
after each strong emotion, some organs being 
reduced and others enlarged, the transitions 
are made by which organisms pass from one 
stage of their development to another. 

In lower organisms, the emotion and reduc- 
tion due to the loss of an organ are often fol- 
lowed by its regeneration, and the limb or 
part is soon replaced. Apparently this does 
not take place in higher organisms, but the 
difference is only apparent. If we assume 
that a reduction, by which the specialization 
of the part is thrown off and the cells are 
restored to their original undifferentiated state, 
precedes the regeneration, it follows that this 
reduction would not take place unless an 
emotion or shock affects the part that is re- 
generated. This would be true of lower or- 
ganisms, for the parts are semi-independent 
and the response to an injury is direct. But 
in higher organisms the injury is in one part 
and the emotion is in another. If a man 
loses a finger, the emotion is not in it, but 



56 Heredity and Social Progress 

in his nervous system or in parts closely re- 
lated to it. The reduction would take place 
in the part affected by the emotion and not 
in the injured part. The regeneration that 
follows the reduction would also be in the 
part affected by the emotion and not in the 
part injured. There would, therefore, be no 
tendency to replace a lost limb, because in its 
region there would be no reduction on which 
the regeneration depends. 

The separation of the injury from the reduc- 
tion and regeneration may be even greater. 
The injury may affect one being and the emo- 
tion affect others. The person involved may 
die and yet the emotional effect be perpetu- 
ated by those who saw or heard of the injury, 
and in them the reduction and regeneration 
takes place. A shocking accident or a ca- 
tastrophe may affect the whole community 
and modify thousands that were not in the 
least concerned in it. Suppose again that a 
beast of prey attacks a herd of deer and kills 
some of them. The emotional effects are 
in those who escape, and not in those cap- 
tured, and the changes in them due to their 



Reduction 57 

emotions are a part of the reactions of their 
descendants. The reduction and regeneration 
incident to the emotions may thus be far re- 
moved from the parts injured or even from 
the beings injured or destroyed. If this be 
true, regeneration may be a universal charac- 
teristic of higher, as well as of lower, organ- 
isms. The regeneration observed in lower 
organisms shows what takes place in the 
higher organisms in the parts affected by 
their emotions. Emotion, reduction, and re- 
generation are parts of one process and may 
be expected to appear in conjunction. 

Let us return to elementary assumptions 
where the simplicity of the position becomes 
evident. Cells tend to divide by the forma- 
tion of two centrosomes at which activity is 
centred. This creates a rhythm, each centre 
being active while the other rests. A com- 
plete division of the cell and the formation 
of two cells would result, were it not for the 
strength of the envelope which holds the two 
parts together. Inside the envelope repeated 
cell division takes place, but as the organism 
is bilateral, the original rhythm is perpetuated 



58 Heredity mid Social Progress 

and the movements of the organism corre- 
lated. A germ cell, while confined in the 
ovary, is under the same influences as are 
the somatic cells. It is, however, in a posi- 
tion to be more easily severed from the 
mother organism and to go more readily 
through the changes that an independent 
organism demands. If severe shocks or in- 
juries throw off some essential part, the re- 
duction through the expulsion of polar bodies 
prepares the way for its regeneration. The 
cutting off of the more specialized parts of a 
cell involves the simplification and regenera- 
tion of the remainder. Regeneration is the 
power of a part to become a whole ; but the 
specialization must be lost before fresh growth 
is possible. This may happen not only in 
simple organisms where the shock or emo- 
tion affects the parts injured, but also in com- 
plex organisms where the shock is carried 
along by the nervous system and not through 
the somatic cells. In the latter case, how- 
ever, the shock is felt in parts of the body 
distant from the seat of injury. These, then, 
would be the parts affected by the emotion, 



Reduction 59 

and in them the reduction and regeneration 
takes place. Or, again, the result may 
be even more complex. The reduction may 
be in the part affected by the emotion, while 
the regeneration or its equivalent takes place 
in still other parts. When, in the process of 
regeneration, the cells strive by growth to re- 
place what has been lost, they must compete 
for nutriment with the cells in other parts of 
the body. If these other cells are more active 
or better situated, they will secure the nutri- 
ment and the part affected by the emotion will 
remain dwarfed. Organs lost or injured by 
shocks may not be replaced. This will account 
for the different stages in embryo growth and 
for the many changes in relative size of organ- 
isms after birth. With the development of a 
nervous organization, such changes must be 
more numerous and alter fundamentally the 
characters and activities of animals. The pri- 
mary rhythm continues, but the somatic cells 
are aggregated more firmly around the nerves 
and are capable of sustaining the shocks which 
the nerves propagate. The parts with few or 
no nerves are more affected by the shocks 



6o Heredity and Social Progress 

that disturb the rhythm of the body than 
are those areas with more nerves. They are 
therefore cut off or reduced in size by the 
nervous shocks. The form of the organism is 
more and more determined by the position 
of its nerves, for every development in the 
nerves modifies some parts of the organism 
by its processes, and injures other parts by 
the shocks which the older parts are least 
able to withstand. The development of 
nerves thus induces both positive and nega- 
tive changes and renders organisms progres- 
sive as long as new nutrition gives the growth 
that produces, first, folds, and secondly, the 
necessary new nerves. 

SUMMARY 

I, Reduction is a phenomenon of sexual reproduction. 
Two polar bodies are in succession separated from the 
female germ cell to make it ready for the reception of the 
male germ. Reduction is a movement towards simplicity 
which goes so far that some elements are cast out that 
must be replaced before growth is renewed. This simplifi- 
cation may be peculiar to sexual reproduction, but there 
are indications that it is an example of the way in which 
all tissue is brought back to simple conditions. 



Reduction 6 1 

2. Emotion is the subjective expression of that which 
antagonizes structure and reduces organisms to simpler 
terms. It may be that reduction is the objective expression 
of these facts and that it takes place in all organisms sub- 
ject to emotional states. Reduction in this case would pre- 
cede regeneration and be the natural step by which organisms 
lose forms of speciaHzation no longer of use, and receive in 
their place other forms of present advantage. 

3. Reproduction and regeneration are not different 
processes, but are due to the same forces acting under 
different conditions. Emotion is the same force expressed 
as feeling, and in conscious beings is the index of the 
despecialization and regeneration acting within them. 

4. In lower organisms the emotion, reduction, and re- 
generation take place in the same part, and a lost hmb is 
often restored ; but in higher organisms a reduction may 
happen in one part and the emotion be felt in another. 
The regeneration then follows the emotion ; the despecial- 
ized part is not restored, but a new specialization begins in 
the part affected by the emotion, and a new organ is formed 
or the relation of different organs is altered. The emotion 
may also be felt by beings not concerned in the reduction, 
as when a man sees an accident ; then the emotional 
changes and the regenerative processes affect the observer 
and not the injured person. Emotion, reduction, and 
regeneration are parts of one process and may always be 
expected to appear in conjunction. 



CHAPTER VI 

Rkstonsiveness 

The principles already presented deserve 
consideration as secondary laws. Precedence 
has been given to present facts, among which 
those readily accessible were preferred. Proof 
should move from the obvious to the obscure, 
from the present to the past, from the known 
to the unknown, from concrete instances to 
inferred generalizations, and from the external 
to the internal. The present, the known, the 
concrete, and the observed should give a body 
of secondary laws, and these, through reflection, 
deduction, unification, and generalization, may 
be transformed into primary laws. If what 
has been said has a surface correctness, the 
results deserve notice, and if the plan is cor- 
rect, they should be capable of restatement in 
more fundamental forms. 

The general result alone needs restatement, 
for it is the sole basis of what follows. The 

62 



Responsiveness 63 

source of growth and change is internal, not 
external. Growth is caused by nutrition re- 
sulting in surplus energy, and not by the exter- 
nal objects with which contact is necessary 
and through which survival is finally secured. 
It forces organisms into natural environments 
where harmony with their surroundings is pos- 
sible and helpful. Internal changes are felt 
and appreciated before the modified being finds 
a place where they are useful and effective. 
Consciousness thus precedes use and is neither 
an effect nor a consequence of it. The vol- 
untary act antedates the involuntary ; instincts 
and habits follow rather than go before the 
less definite impulses which do not depend on 
structure and specialization. Movement pre- 
cedes growth, and structure arises before it 
finds a useful function. Were men guided 
by their current observations, discarding both 
theories and complex analyses, they would find 
plenty of proof for these assertions. A micro- 
scope or a bold deduction might prove much 
of it to be defective, but in some way the more 
fundamental laws would be the expression of 
current observations. The facts of everyday 



64 Heredity and Social Progress 

life may assume a radically different form in 
scientific laws, and yet they are there. The 
primary laws confirm the secondary if the 
latter are really the result of observation. 

Opposed to these observations is the theory 
that the mind is a blank until aroused by external 
sensations. Nothing but the physical and ma- 
terial can exist until contact with the external 
starts mental activity. Therefore conscious- 
ness can play no part in the formation of 
ultimate organic relations, but is a result that 
appears after they have been established. 

This philosophy, attributable in the first in- 
stance to Locke, has been thoroughly ingrafted 
on modern thought. It holds sensation to be 
primary and the only basis upon which the 
higher faculties rest. The starting-point of con- 
sciousness is assumed to be the external stim- 
ulus which comes over developed nerves, and 
not a result of the general conditions of life. 
We now know, as Locke did not, that all the 
elements of consciousness exist in various com- 
binations in the cell before the nerves appear. 
We know that even the simple nervous arc 
which gives sensation and its motor response 



Responsiveness 65 

is not the first form of activity. Movement 
precedes the structure which makes sensation 
possible. When an efferent nerve carries a 
current from the surface of the body to a ner- 
vous centre and then a return current passing 
over an efferent nerve causes bodily move- 
ments, we have the simplest form of reaction 
between organisms and the environment, but 
nevertheless it may not be the simplest form 
of mental activity. If, instead of starting from 
nerve centres, a start is made from the princi- 
ples of cell growth, a different aspect of simple 
conditions is attained, for life may be unicellu- 
lar in which no nervous response is possible. 
After multicellular organisms appear it is some 
time before a distinct nervous system arises. 
The simple in mental life must therefore lie in 
cell structure, and not in the more developed 
reactions which the nervous arc permits. 

It is a well-established fact that the highest 
form of cell is the original germ cell from 
which all others are derived. In it are all 
the qualities which the later-developed cells 
reproduce, each in its own realm. The respon- 
siveness of this germ cell to general stimuli 



66 Heredity and Social Progress 

is also greater than that of the somatic 
cells, which, being more specialized, respond 
only to particular agents. If the germ cell 
alone has the capacity to respond to every 
stimulus, it alone can be the seat or the 
necessary accompaniment of consciousness. 
Objectively considered, consciousness is respon- 
siveness, and responsiveness must be either 
cellular or intercellular. The intercellular 
parts are less responsive to general stimuli 
than the cells, and the somatic' or derived cells 
are less responsive than the original germ cell. 
Its continuity alone is preserved in reproduc- 
tion, and it is all that the different organisms 
have in common. Consciousness, the common 
quality of all life, would seem, therefore, to 
be connected with this unique germ cell, and 
any objective method of measuring it through 
responsiveness must join the two together 
and regard them as two sides of one func- 
tion. 

If this is so, the simplest forms of conscious- 
ness should coincide with the simplest form of 

1 Somatic cells are derived by differentiation from the original 
germ cells. 



Responsiveness 67 

growth,^ As soon as cells divide and differ- 
entiate, the manifestations of consciousness 
should appear in connection with this growth. 
Any aggregate of cells that becomes structure 
should be the means of making more definite 
the two elementary functions, movement and 
consciousness. This would be true if the out- 
ward current through any structure should 
create movement and the return current should 
arouse memory, the simplest element in con- 
sciousness. If a structure permitted an out- 
ward flow that appears objectively as motion, 
no additional mechanism would be needed for 
a return flow which should affect the germ cell 
and so excite thought. When the outgoing 
and incoming currents traverse the same struc- 
ture, the effects of the current from the germ 
cell to the somatic cells is movement, and 
those of the current from the somatic to 
the germ cell is memory. When the outgoing 
and incoming currents utilize different struc- 
ture, the one is motor and the other is sensory. 
Sensation comes, therefore, at a later stage 
of development than memory, and demands a 

^ I use "growth " in the sense of the multiplication of cells. 



68 Heredity and Social Progress 

more complex mechanism. Any group of cells, 
by making structure, can yield movement and 
memory. They are the necessary accompani- 
ments of all multicellular growth. But sensa- 
tion demands the nervous arc, and this appears 
only in a more complex form of structure. 

The growth and changes in cells have two 
processes : the period of growth during which 
energy is stored — the anabolic ; and the period 
of change, waste, and destruction of the stored 
material — the katabolic. Which of these is 
the cause or accompaniment of consciousness? 
It cannot be the anabolic process, because 
that is particularly active during sleep, when 
consciousness disappears. Besides, we know 
that thought processes are accompanied by de- 
structive changes through which waste products 
are formed. This means that consciousness 
is confined to katabolic epochs and is continu- 
ous only as katabolic changes are continuous. 
We might therefore expect a simple cell to 
have a conscious period during the time of 
katabolic destruction and a lapse of conscious- 
ness when the anabolic processes were building 
up the cell. An intermittent consciousness 



Responsiveness 69 

would first result — an evil, however, which 
would be removed by the development of two 
centres of katabolic activity. Each in turn 
would sustain consciousness while the other 
underwent anabolic changes. Consciousness 
would thus be a rhythm, a movement, and a 
destruction appearing in turn at two centres. 
There would be a rise of consciousness as each 
centre increased its activity and then a decline 
in consciousness until the increase of activity 
at the other centre again raised its level. The 
struggle for the continuity of consciousness 
would then consist in having these two centres 
so alternate in their activity that a given level 
is maintained. 

This condition creates an evil almost fatal to 
a continuous consciousness. The two centres 
of activity, in becoming habitual, tend to create 
cell division, and two cells are soon formed, in 
each of which there is only one active centre, 
so that new centres must be formed to main- 
tain the rhythm demanded by a continuous 
consciousness ; and when developed they again 
divide the cell and destroy the continuity. 
Such are the endless attempts to reach a con- 



70 He7'edity and Social Progress 

tinuity of consciousness without any enduring 
success. Only one way out of this difficulty is 
apparent — a growth in the envelope of the cell 
elastic and strong enough to prevent complete 
separation of the divided cell. Multicellular 
organisms then appear which preserve all the 
characteristics of the unicellular activity, — con- 
tinuous rhythm and growth in two balanced 
parts. Any disturbance of the equilibrium 
proves destructive of the organism and each 
half corresponds to the other, both as a whole 
and in its parts. Every movement in one 
part is followed by a rest and an activity in the 
other part. Movements may be said to be 
katabolic changes in the germ cell affecting the 
somatic cells, while memory is the effect on the 
germ cell of katabolic changes in the somatic 
cells. The more important the latter becomes, 
the less is the stress on the original cell, which 
if too frequent or strong, would by disrupting 
it end life. The development of instinctive 
responses in the somatic cells which follow 
nervous growth also relieves the original cell 
without interfering with the continuity of con- 
sciousness. Memories now become the leading 



Responsiveness 7 1 

states of consciousness, and activity is in the 
main transferred to other centres, so that less 
damage is done to the organism by the vigor of 
their activity. In this way complex organisms 
are developed that comply with the demands for 
rhythm and harmony, and also raise memory 
into a dominant psychic trait. 

I have in the foregoing pages presented the 
consequences that flow from a few simple 
assumptions; first, a difference between the 
germ cell and somatic cells by which the latter 
become structure and the former exhibit respon- 
siveness; second, a relation between movement 
and memory so that one structure can excite 
both memory and movement simply by a change 
in the direction of the nervous current ; and 
finally there is the assumption that conscious- 
ness is confined to katabolic epochs. As 
these are intermittent, two centres of activity 
are necessary to form a continuous conscious- 
ness. A rhythm of action follows, resulting 
in the growth of complex organisms with all 
those diverse elements and conditions which 
puzzle the observer. 

Many simple facts harmonize with these 



72 Heredity and Social Progress 

assumptions. Organisms are bilateral. The 
parts of the brain are duplicated and the right 
and left sides of the body are similar. Bodily 
actions are in rhythms which, by being pleas- 
urable, help to sustain life, while any move- 
ment out of rhythm is painful and destructive. 
Many philosophers make rhythm a funda- 
mental law of the universe, but even without 
such an extensive application, the validity of 
the thought may easily be verified in organic 
processes. The love of music, the harmony of 
colors, and the constant desire to replace each 
sensation, feeling, or emotion by others, all 
indicate how important this principle is. If it 
is not a condition of life, it is at least an im- 
portant secondary law and in this form it will 
serve my purpose. 

Professor Weismann has made emphatic 
the difference between the germ cell and the 
somatic cells derived from it. Although the 
germ cell can influence the somatic cells, yet 
they, in turn, cannot alter its structure. It 
retains its full responsiveness and hence can 
reflect in itself the essence of the changes in 
the somatic cells. It has, therefore, the condi- 



Responsiveness 73 

tions of consciousness and more readily may be 
assumed to be the seat of consciousness than 
any other part of the body. In fact, by a 
process of exclusion it would seem to be the 
only possible seat of consciousness, because 
the necessary specialization of the somatic 
cells takes from them the general responsive- 
ness needed for a continuous consciousness. 
Nor could the rhythm of the body be estab- 
lished unless it began at the first division 
of the germ cell through which the organism 
developed. If rhythms are the only means of 
sustaining consciousness, they would of neces- 
sity be a function of the original germ cell 
and must continue in connection with it. 
The rhythm of the germ cell creates struc- 
ture in the somatic cells, and the movements 
resulting from this structure excite a non- 
structural response in the germ cell. Move- 
ment thus builds structure, and structure, in 
its reaction, excites memory. 

The fact of cell division also strengthens 
the belief that consciousness is sustained at 
two centres in the germ cell. Each cell has 
a centrosome which appears to be its dynamic 



74 Heredity and Social Progress 

centre, and which divides when a new cell is 
formed. At any rate, the first indication of 
cell division is the appearance of two new 
centrosomes about which the activity of each 
part is concentrated, and, as they grow, the 
cell is gradually divided until each part be- 
comes independent. Two new centrosomes 
now appear in each new cell and the process 
of division is repeated. If consciousness is 
evoked by the activity of these centrosomes 
and two centres of alternate activity are 
needed to sustain it, the process of cell 
division must be delayed so that segments 
instead of new cells may be formed. This is 
done through improvements in the cell wall, 
by which it becomes more elastic or stronger 
and thus prevents the alternate activity at 
the two centres from completely severing the 
cell. If subsequent division likewise fails to 
break through the original cell wall, the aggre- 
gate of cells forms a multicellular organism. 
The simplest of these aggregates involves a 
bilateral growth in which are all the elements 
of a continuous consciousness. Each of the 
two original centres controls the activity of its 



Responsiveness 75 

part and the reaction of the subordinate or 
somatic cells is the antecedent of memory. 
Sensations due to outward contact have to 
wait for a more complex organization to sepa- 
rate the route travelled by the outgoing and 
incoming currents. So long as they moved 
over the same route in alternation, no outer ob- 
ject can be distinctly perceived nor can the use 
of organs determine their growth and devel- 
opment. Adjustment would be accidental. 

An aggregate of cells therefore indicates 
conscious action, in that the secondary cells, or 
segments, respond to the impulse of the mother 
cell. It also indicates memory since the 
activity of each part repeats the activity of the 
other. While one half is active because of an 
outgoing current in its direction, there is an 
ingoing current from the other half, each 
part being directed in its activity by what has 
taken place in the other. This is the essence 
of memory — the reproduction in a new 
activity of that which has been done before. 
In a simple bilateral organism there must 
always be a memory present to guide each 
new activity, because the other part has just 



76 Heredity and Social Progress 

done the act that is to be repeated and its 
effects still remain in consciousness. Either 
side is the mind when the other is the moving 
body. 

SUMMARY 

1. The highest form of cell Hfe is in the original germ 
cell. The responsiveness of this cell is greater than that of 
any of the somatic cells derived from it. It must therefore 
be thought of as the seat or necessary accompaniment of 
consciousness. 

2. The simplest form of consciousness should coincide 
with the simplest form of cell growth. Consciousness and 
movement are opposing poles of the same forces. Outgo- 
ing currents through cell structure create movement ; in- 
going currents arouse consciousness. A group of cells 
making structure can yield movement and memory. 

3. In growth anabolic and katabolic epochs alternate. 
Consciousness is confined to the katabolic or destructive 
epochs. It is therefore naturally intermittent and can be 
made constant only by a doubling of the katabolic centres 
so that one may sustain consciousness when the other rests. 

4. Consciousness is a rhythm between two centres. Two 
active centres tend to disrupt the cell, and for this evil the 
only remedy is the strengthening of the cell wall to resist 
the disrupting tendencies. 

5. The presence of two active centres, while the cell 
divides, tends to confirm the foregoing analysis of conscious- 
ness. 



CHAPTER VII 

Sensation 

Adjustment is a process, not of creating the 
conditions of consciousness, but of getting a 
content for it. The original cell has all the 
responsiveness of any cell, but this capacity 
cannot be made effective until a structure has 
been developed that conveys to it some indica- 
tions of the external world. The first struggle, 
however, is not for experience, but for con- 
sciousness. If consciousness coincides with 
katabolic changes, and two centres of activity 
are necessary for its continuity, certain ele- 
mentary relations must be worked out before 
sensations can be received and interpreted. 
The tendency for cells to subdivide starts a 
development in the envelope, and causes the 
growth of structure to be bilateral. This pre- 
adjustment stage of development can be meas- 
ured subjectively by consciousness, pleasure, 
and memory; and objectively in rhythm, mo- 

77 



78 Heredity and Social Progress 

tion, and structure. All these are present in 
the simplest forms of multicellular life, rhythm 
being the objective expression of a continuous 
consciousness. Motion is likewise the objec- 
tive expression of pleasure, and structure is a 
like expression of memory. Such an organism 
could perpetuate itself so far as its own condi- 
tions were concerned, but it would be at the 
mercy of any adverse objective change. With- 
out sensations, no adjustment and no avoidance 
of external evils are possible. As soon as the 
interests of different organisms come into con- 
flict, the acquisition and development of sensa- 
tions begin ; but they must develop along the 
lines of the struggle for consciousness, and 
utilize the material it furnishes. All the ele- 
mentary forces are already in play. The prob- 
lem is to use them to secure a content, as well 
as a continuity, for consciousness. 

To show how this is wrought, I will again 
say that all structure is the result of motion, 
and that simple structure directly subserves 
the subjective end of sustaining consciousness, 
and indirectly, the objective end of creating 
movements. The struggle for consciousness 



Sensation 79 

involves the development of motor organs. 
Structure not needed to sustain activity can 
serve, by becoming passive, as a channel for 
currents excited by external relations, and con- 
vey to the mind indications of what takes place 
on the outside. Sensation, under these condi- 
tions, is the utilization of disused motor organs 
for the purpose of receiving impressions.^ 
Disused parts acquire a new use by forwarding 
currents inward. Before this differentiation 
survival is purely accidental ; after it, the en- 
vironment acts on organisms, and gives an 
advantage to the best developed. The external 
now becomes known, and the better move- 
ments of the more developed organs assist in 
adjustment or in the avoidance of evils. A 
new epoch of development is entered, in which 
consciousness is sustained by the continuous 
inflow of impressions instead of the early de- 
pendence on the spontaneous activity of the 
germ cell. 

Let us picture this change on the organic 

* See the writer's article on " Overnutrition and its Social 
Consequences" in the Annals of the American Acadetny of 
Political and Social Science, July, 1897. 



8o Heredity and Social Progress 

side in the way it may occur. The elementary 
form of cell growth is an aggregate extending 
in two directions from the partially divided 
germ cell, each part duplicating the other. If 
these two parts do not have equal growth, one 
will overreach the other. This overreaching 
produces a fold, and a fold has the possibilities 
of an ovary. The surplus energy of the origi- 
nal cell does not now go out to so complete a 
degree in the formation of somatic cells, but 
a bud is formed with all the qualities of the 
original cell. It tends to pass out through the 
enclosure and become an independent organ- 
ism. But to get out, it must break through 
the envelope that encloses the cells. If it suc- 
ceeds, then new organisms result ; but if the 
envelope is too strong or elastic, this series of 
enclosed cells becomes nerves. Nerves are to 
be thought of as motor organs made passive 
because the germ cells from which they are 
derived cannot get the outer position on which 
movement and more complete growth depend. 
They thus have new functions forced on them 
in harmony with the organism within which 
they are enclosed. Being more responsive to 



Sensation 8 1 

stimuli than are the somatic cells, they carry 
stimuli more easily and with less waste than 
earlier growths. Nerve cells are germ cells 
captured and turned to a new use. Their 
differentiation is not due to the simple laws 
of growth, but is the result of the pressure of 
complex conditions. Were they free to assume 
simpler forms, they would become independent 
organisms instead of mere propagators of ac- 
tivity generated elsewhere. Their passivity 
is not a natural state, but is impressed upon 
them by confinement. All cell aggregates are 
primarily motor. They lose this function only 
in an abnormal position. 

Herbert Spencer has said that the growth of 
nervous power is opposed to reproduction, and 
that the rate of production falls off as nervous 
power increases. If the nerves are made up of 
germ cells, the greater part of which are 
retained and specialized, the organism has 
less surplus energy to reproduce its kind. 
Confined sex products thus become the means 
by which currents are propagated. They are 
more responsive and quicker conductors than 
other cells, and motor energy passes along 



82 Heredity aiid Social Progress 

them more readily than over other mediums. 
Nerve cells are thus germ cells which, in 
simpler organisms, would have become inde- 
pendent beings. Wherever growth is active, 
it absorbs the greater part of the nutrition that 
the organism assimilates. Folds are formed, 
and their growth develops enclosures before 
the buds have time to develop, ripen, and 
escape. There is an opposition between 
growth and reproduction. Where growth is 
rapid, buds do not push out rapidly enough 
to prevent the growing folds from reaching 
and enclosing them by a fusion of the edges. 
Reproduction is thereby delayed, and its amount 
is much reduced below what it would be if 
the earlier sex products were not confined and 
transformed into nerves. 

If this thought is in a measure correct, form 
is given to organisms through nerve growth. 
Mere flesh would be little more than a mass. 
Nerves grow in fixed directions and press 
against the envelope that holds them in. Be- 
ing sex products, they strive to break through 
the envelope and free themselves. They 
succeed if the envelope is not elastic, or 



Sensation ^-^ 

if the growth is so slow that the envelope 
cannot adjust itself to the new conditions. 
But where growth is active, the envelope yields 
before the growing nerve, until an equilibrium 
is attained, with the result that a new organ is 
formed. In case a partial break in the envelope 
is made, renewed growth, finally gaining the 
upper hand, keeps the nerve encased in 
the envelope. A tooth seems to me to have 
such an origin. The nerve, in its effort to emit 
its sex products, presses against the skin and 
partially breaks through. The skin hardens 
over the injured part and the tooth results, 
which holds the nerve in. The troubles of 
children in teething are due to the conflict of 
the nerve forces and the growth forces. In the 
end the latter conquer, and then an equilibrium 
is attained with a passive nerve. 

On the face of things, this may seem an inad- 
equate explanation, because teeth appear to 
come because they are useful, and the result of 
adjustment rather than a mere effort of sex 
products to free themselves. But it should 
be remembered that teeth in lower organisms 
are not necessarily useful organs. They often 



84 Heredity and Social Progress 

appear in great abundance in places wheie they 
have no function. Evolution eliminates the 
useless teeth and makes those that remain more 
useful. A mere struggle between growth and 
reproduction could thus cause the beginnings of 
teeth and permit selection so to operate that 
they would be converted into useful organs. 

A nerve, from this viewpoint, is a series of 
sex products so enclosed within an envelope 
that it cannot break out. In the plant the 
flower that reproduces is at the end of a stem, 
and becomes a sex organ if it gets the mastery 
over growth. The brain and the spinal cord 
may be thought of in the same category as a 
stem and flower, only the brain never succeeds 
in forcing its way through the envelope that 
encloses it. It is a sex organ that never 
attains its elementary functions. It would be 
even better to think of it as a loosely organized 
colony subdividing and trying to give off sex 
products, but prevented by the encasement that 
checks division. Failing in its original pur- 
pose, it becomes an organ of sense discrimina- 
tion and serves as a centre of nervous currents 
moving to and fro along the spinal cord. If 



Sensation 85 

consciousness depends on responsiveness, the 
undifferentiated cell would be most capable of 
it. No cell can be less specialized than the 
germ cell, from which all others originate. If 
the brain is a sex organ, — an enclosed ovary 
capable of creating sex products, — it would 
have undifferentiated cells that might become 
the seat of consciousness. Keep this loose 
colony of germ cells from separating, and the 
grouping of cells necessary to a vivid conscious- 
ness would result. 

Sensation is, then, not a simple state of con- 
sciousness, but the product of numerous com- 
plex conditions. The organism must attain 
considerable complexity before it becomes cog- 
nizant of the external world. And yet these 
conditions fall back on a few simple ones that 
are easily perceived if the complex conditions 
of survival are eliminated. If survival is the 
ultimate condition and starting-point of life, 
then life is complex and hard to explain. But 
if mere continuity is the first end, its laws are 
plain. There must be a rhythm of action due 
to katabolic changes, and the envelope must 
develop to resist the tendencies to disruption 



86 Heredity and Social Progress 

These two conditions involve all the others. 
Sensation is the final result of the first stage 
of development, and the beginning of a new 
epoch in which external conditions have a domi- 
nant place. It is thus the beginning or the end, 
just as the emphasis is placed on life or on 
survival. 

If this be so, the two parts of my argu- 
ment agree. The problem is, How is the sur- 
plus energy of improved economic conditions 
utilized to make permanent changes in organ- 
isms and to allow the effects of economic 
betterments to perpetuate themselves .? The 
reply in terms of biology is that increased 
nutrition results in a larger number of so- 
matic cells, the unequal growth of which 
causes folds which are centres of reproduction. 
The germs created in these incipient ovaries 
are cast off if the rapidity of growth does 
not cause them to be enclosed and retained as 
parts of the organism. They are then trans- 
formed into nerves which are better channels 
for nervous currents than are somatic cells. 
So long as growth is dominant, the number of 
folds increases, bringing with them a more 



Sensation 87 

complex system of nerves and the concen- 
trated control of higher organisms. New nu- 
trition having augmented the number of folds, 
and forced the increased complexity of the 
organism, now raises the level of its psychic 
life. 

These changes are associated with use when 
use is spoken of as the cause of development. 
Judged by effects, there is a measure of truth 
in the claim, but it should be remembered 
that the organism is altered and new organs or 
parts are created, not because they are of use, 
but as a result of the way new nutrition acts 
on the organism. The law is an expression of 
growth and not of survival. When, however, an 
organ is formed or a part is modified, the organ- 
ism is out of harmony with its old environment 
and must seek another where its new powers are 
of use. When a new equilibrium is attained, 
the harmony between the organism and the en- 
vironment indicates that the environment was 
the cause of the now useful organs. But this 
is not true, for, as we have seen, they are the 
result of the surplus energy of a preceding 
environment which so interrupted the harmoiiy 



88 Heredity and Social Progress 

between the environment and the organism 
that it was forced to seek a new adjustment. 
Use follows growth instead of preceding it, 
as current doctrines assert. 

So much for one side of the problem ; on 
the other side the dwarfing or disappearance of 
ororans must be accounted for. And now we 
must look to the emotions. The shocks to 
the system reduce the parts affected by the 
discordant nervous discharges, and they are 
thrown back into their earlier state to grow 
again, if they are to be re-formed. Regenera- 
tion is usually possible, although growth may 
be inconsiderable if other parts of the system 
are making urgent demands for fresh nutrition. 
Organs disappear or are much dwarfed, while 
the new parts grow and absorb the unappropri- 
ated nutriment. The discordant shocks affect 
the parts least supplied with nerves, and trim 
them down. The nerves have direction, and 
give form to the organism by the gradual re- 
duction of parts without them. 

The reduction and alterations made by 
these forces transform beings, and cause organs 
to disappear or to be modified. To them must 



Sensatio7i 89 

be attributed the changes that are commonly 
attributed to disuse. Not in disuse, however, 
will we find the source of changes that cut 
down organs. Useless organs might remain 
indefinitely if the emotions did not affect them 
disadvantageously. But when cut down by 
nervous shocks, they do not grow again to 
their full size, if other parts absorb the nutri- 
ment on which growth depends. If this be 
true, the apparent effects of disuse are easily 
accounted for without assuming that acquired 
characters have any effect on the descendants 
of those who acquire them. The play of the 
emotions is sufficient to account for the reduc- 
tion and disappearance of organs. 

SUMMARY 

The original germ cell has a capacity for consciousness, 
but no content. For a content structure is necessary, through 
which will and memory are evoked. Sensation is not, there- 
fore, an elementary function of consciousness, but an im- 
posed condition, and presupposes the existence of nerves, 
which, in turn, are the complex resultant of several condi- 
tions. Growth creates folds and they become incipient 
ovaries, the sex products of which are nerve cells. These 
cells are enclosed germ cells so differentiated and united 



90 Heredity and Social Progress 

that they are ready means of passing motor currents. When, 
through more extensive differentiations, some of these motor 
segments are of no further use in movement, they become 
feelers which direct inward impressions from without. 
These impressions are sensations and become important 
aids to survival. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Visualization 

The popular concept of the mind emphasizes 
the conditions of survival instead of those of 
life. The outer world, from which sensations 
come, gains its importance through the strug- 
gles for its possession. As these struggles 
become more intense, consciousness is more 
fully centred on outer events, until, in the end, 
the sensations by which we know such events 
seem the sole content of the mind. Conscious- 
ness, then, appears to begin with the quality 
which gives superiority in struggle ; but life 
antedates this struggle and its elements must 
in some way have already existed in the simple 
conditions upon which life depends. Struggle 
creates nothing; it only gives clearness and 
value to what had another origin. Nor is it an 
advance to analyze the contents of conscious- 
ness into simpler elements of a like kind, — if 
progress is to be made, let us find the physical 

91 



92 Heredity and Social Progress 

accompaniment of each mental phenomenon. 
Have not memory, will, sensation, and other 
psychic contrasts a physical background, and 
are they not at bottom distinct or similar only 
so far as they have the same or different physi- 
cal antecedents ? Psychic effects cannot be 
more complex than their physical causes. 
When, therefore, we know the deeds the body 
can do, we know the psychic variety the mind 
can manifest. Any greater complexity is not 
real but apparent. 

In the simplest form of life, the surplus 
energy due to assimilation creates more cells 
and greater complexity of form. This natural 
growth is bilateral, and action due to sur- 
plus energy is rhythmic. There is a rising 
tide of activity on one side when there is 
a falling tide on the other. The conscious 
effect of the latter is memory, and that of the 
former is will. There are not in structure a 
storehouse for memories and a distinct mech- 
anism to start bodily movements. When we 
see the antecedents of a movement and not 
its consequents, we call them will ; when we 
are conscious of the consequents and not of 



Visualization 93 

the antecedents, we call them memory. Inter- 
rupt rhythms and destroy all bilateral relations 
and memory ceases. I say again, memory is 
not a storehouse ; nor is it concentrated in 
the brain or elsewhere, for it is the fibre and 
warp of the body. The only record of the 
past is in some growth which changes the 
direction of nervous currents and of activity. 
Memory is, therefore, a phenomenon of related 
parts. Isolate these parts, break up the cor- 
relation of structure that makes rhythm, and 
the resultant activity is visualization, or the 
struggle of a part for its natural complement. 
A physical deprivation becomes a mental 
picture inciting to activity. In isolation the 
complementary unknown looms as more than 
real. The mental picture is not a fact, but 
a fancy, and in the channel it forms there 
is a pleasant flow of energy so long as the 
surplus vitality holds out. This, in its 
simplest form, is the sex impulse, and the 
irritation of sex isolation is the prime motive 
in the struggles for the realization of fancy. 
Separation raises the level of consciousness 
and intensifies its pictures. Strongest emo- 



94 Heredity and Social Progress 

tions are for ideals which complement the one- 
sidedness of reality, — we repeat in each such 
picture the isolation of the sex impulse, — 
and each rising tide of idealization indicates 
some lack of complementary unity in the 
physical background of thought. A physical 
break precedes the mental elation which ac- 
companies visualization. It is simple katabolic 
activity in a disrupted, despecialized cell, and 
is thus an upheaval, — an emotion, — a want 
of equilibrium which ceases when the physical 
equilibrium is restored. An intense conscious- 
ness means some physical rupture in the forces 
that make for life and growth. Let me put 
this in its simplest form. Bilateral growth is 
a primary tendency of life in which action is 
rhythmic. Isolate these parts and each tries to 
replace the other by regeneration. There is 
a physical impulse inherent in organic life 
that struggles to restore any disturbed equi- 
librium. If thought and life run parallel, this 
physical impulse which demands and shapes 
the physical complements of an isolated part, 
must have a mental accompaniment that points 
a complement to the ideas which this part can 



Visualization 95 

itself create. The mental struggle for comple- 
mentary ideas is visualization. It might be 
called the strain of an interrupted rhythm. 
Ideals are the result of a struggle for mental 
regeneration, and they appear when a break 
in continuity arouses an impulse to establish 
physical complements. 

Visualization and memory are now seen to 
represent opposing tendencies. Wherever there 
is growth there is memory: visualization 
comes with disruption and tendencies toward 
simplicity. The isolation of parts naturally 
rhythmic creates a sudden burst of activity, 
and this intensifies mental life. Memory is 
dimmed and consciousness projects pictures of 
lost complementary relations. Whenever there 
is a break in growth, the current of thought 
flows on some absent relation, and then the 
thought becomes fancy and not fact. These 
breaks come through the emotions, and they 
represent the discordant elements that disturb 
growth and throw life back into simpler forms. 

The three elementary mental states coincide 
with three physical conditions. Memory ac- 
companies bilateral growth ; emotion arises 



96 Heredity and Social Progress 

when discordant elements interfere with this 
harmonious growth, renewing it in a simpler 
form ; visualization springs from the isolation 
of parts by disruptive elements. Start growth 
and memory will appear. Arrest it, and emo- 
tion arises. Struggle to reconstruct it and vis- 
ualization begins. A disruptive discharge of 
energy is emotion, a blocked discharge is 
visualization, while a harmonious discharge is 
the source of memory. A developing organ- 
ism with plenty of surplus energy has periods 
of growth which create the structure upon 
which will and memory depend ; it has disrup- 
tive epochs when some portions of this struc- 
ture are destroyed, simplified, or isolated, and 
epochs of regeneration when growth in new 
forms builds new structure which conforms to 
new needs. 

Emotion and visualization are the result of 
these periods of transition. If structure be- 
comes hardened so that it does not change, the 
qualities disappear or are much weakened. It 
is natural, however, that structure should be 
displaced and new forms, bringing with them 
new memories and actions, should appear. 



Visualization 97 

Struggle prevents these processes, retains old 
structure because its particular form is of use 
to the organism, and diminishes the nutri- 
ment, and therefore the surplus energy, of each 
competitive organism. The insufficient expen- 
diture of the smaller fund of energy in strug- 
gling organisms at length stops the displace- 
ment and replacement of structure. But an 
embryo which has no struggle but plenty of 
surplus energy builds, tears down, and replaces 
structure in a hundred ways. The adult uses 
its diminished fund of energy to repair old 
useful structure. Energy traversing this old 
structure is habit, and when it assumes fixed 
forms like useful recollections, we call them 
" associated ideas " ; but habits and associations 
are only remnants of mental life in the retained 
structures, while sensation is visualization 
dimmed and regulated by passing through 
these same hardened structures. 

When a structure is so hardened that it can- 
not change, the same product following each ex- 
citation enables men to judge accurately of the 
external world and to increase their chances of 
survival. Had energy remained abundant and 



gS Heredity and Social Progress 

no need of struggle appeared, these structures 
would have been replaced, not repaired, and 
then habit, association, and sensation would 
have been less definite and more constantly 
modified. Life would always be the Present, 
with new structure to create new thoughts, 
and new emotions and visualizations to broaden 
its contents. We think of memories and sensa- 
tions as being accurate representations of the 
past, or of outside conditions. But this is true 
only as they are the products of hardened 
structures. The being of larger energy makes 
new structure, and mingles his emotions and 
visualizations with structural products in the 
form of memory and of sensation. The more 
mobile the structure, the more do all these ele- 
ments melt in the flow of thought and the less 
able is the thinker to distinguish their origins. 
In the growing child fact and fancy flow along 
together — a condition which would remain if 
new structure were as readily created in the 
adult as it is in the child. But struggle makes 
men analytic by forcing them to attend solely 
to sensations and associated memories. Emo- 
tion and fancy are not only isolated but are 



Visualization 99 

even dismissed as unrealities from the mental 
products of a more structural nature. They 
are, however, the prime elements in the broader 
life displaced by struggle, and no analysis of 
mental products is possible if it does not begin 
with them. Memory and visualization are thus 
at opposite poles of thought. Memory acts 
through structure and increases in clearness 
as structure grows in complexity and in the 
definiteness of its action. Visualization is 
the acme of isolation. Interrupt complexity, 
decrease the number of complementary rela- 
tions, reduce life to its simplest terms, and vis- 
ualization becomes more intense at each step. 
It is as simple and vivid as memory is complex 
and clear. Thought varies between these two 
poles and has ingredients from both of them. 
As it rises in intensity, turning toward the 
complement of the real and present, it becomes 
ideal, but when it falls in intensity, settling 
back on the present and real, it becomes 
grooved in structure as memory. Devolution 
and growth are thus both represented in 
thought, and by their relative force fix the 

direction of its currents. 

I L.of C. 



lOO Heredity and Social Progress 



SUMMARY 

Memory acts through structure and depends upon its 
laws. It becomes clear and forceful as structure becomes 
complex and definite. There is no storehouse for memories. 
They are not separate accumulations nor centres, but are 
due to routes through structure made by previous activity. 

Stop the correlations of structure, isolate related parts, 
and the resultant activity is visualization. It is the mental 
side of the struggle of a part for its natural complement. 
In its simplest form it is the isolation and struggle of the sex 
impulse, but in its higher forms, it becomes fancy and gives 
a background to the idealism of thought. Idealism is the 
activity of a disrupted despecialized centre. It is the acme 
of devolutional forces in the same way that memory is the 
product of evolution, growth, and structure. 



CHAPTER IX 
A Possibility 

In the foregoing explanation only a few 
simple elements have been used. Facts about 
cell life have been correlated with the external 
conditions upon which life depends, and an 
endeavor has been made to show how things 
discovered in one field express themselves in 
the other. An adverse objective condition, 
an emotion, and a reduction affecting the 
cell are the same elements viewed in differ- 
ent ways. Several such parallels have been 
worked out to furnish an explanation of the 
simple facts of life and nutrition, without 
the introduction of unknown quantities or 
qualities. But even admitting that simple life 
is fully accounted for in this way, we are still 
far from a ready explanation of human beings. 
Either new elements must be admitted or the 
simple elements are capable of more com- 
plex relations than those already pointed out. 
As most writers think that consciousness is 



I02 Heredity and Social Progress 

not a product of cell activity, there is appar- 
ently a gulf between the simplicity of the cell 
and the complexity of higher life with its con- 
centrated consciousness. Are we then to look 
for new and foreign elements in the higher 
life, or have we in some disguise the simple 
elements we already know ? We may at least 
consider the possibility in the latter query, 
even though we may be far from proof. 
There is an attraction in carrying ideas to 
their legitimate consequences even though 
they appear there in a somewhat fanciful 
form. But when the hypothesis is carefully 
examined, much of its fanciful character dis- 
appears. It is not strange that simple ele- 
ments should produce remarkable effects if 
they have the time and conditions in which 
to act, and the theory of evolution leads us 
to expect that things known in one form 
might be gradually changed into forms seem- 
ingly different and strange. 

The facts presented show that the highest 
form of a cell is the undifferentiated germ cell 
with which life begins. Greater complexity in 
the cell and in its relations enables specific 



A Possibility 103 

things to be more easily accomplished, but 
the gain thus made in particular directions 
is accompanied by a loss in that general 
responsiveness upon which consciousness de- 
pends. Reduction and regeneration may bring 
back the responsiveness which the somatic 
cells have lost, yet if a lack of differentia- 
tion is the test of the heights to which cell 
life can ascend, germ cells would still be 
the superior cells and those in which con- 
sciousness reaches its highest form. We have, 
however, a tendency against consciousness in 
the fact that reproduction takes from the 
body the cells which, if retained, would be 
the best medium of consciousness. This, in 
part, is counteracted by the retention of the 
sex products within the body and their trans- 
formation into nerves. But admitting this, 
nerves are specialized products, and while 
they permit a freer and readier flow of nerve 
currents, they do not form the undifferentiated 
centres where consciousness might dwell. To 
account for nerves is one thing; to account 
for a head and brain is another. A body may 
have instincts, emotions, nerve currents, — yes, 



I04 Heredity and Social Pj'ogress 

even memories; but brain action must have 
some other explanation, or at least some other 
combination of the elements upon which bodily 
actions depend. 

In this explanation I shall rely on a few 
simple facts already offered : first, the highest 
cell is the undifferentiated germ cell ; second, 
where growth dominates over reproduction, 
germs maybe enclosed within the body; and 
third, the folds created by rapid growth be- 
come ovaries, where sex products generate/ 

1 An ovary may be defined as a place wliere sex products are 
confined. If they are due to folds, these folds may be external 
or internal as the folds open outward or inward. The external 
ovaries would naturally discharge their products, in which case 
fertilization by sexual means could take place. But the internal 
ovaries cannot thus discharge their products. They can at best 
become buds and gain independence by severing the original 
organism. Growth by buds may thus be a combination of 
reproduction and regeneration. The inner part doubles, but 
the outer part is divided and the missing parts of each portion 
are regenerated. In the case of the alternation of generations 
it would seem that in one form the ovary is internal, and the 
growth is by budding, while in the other the ovary is ex- 
ternal and reproduction is sexual. It may also be said that 
growth by budding is alone possible where growth dominates 
largely over reproduction. Then all the ovaries become enclosed, 
and sexual reproduction is impossible until the growth forces 
are much weakened. There may be many generations of asexual 
reproduction. 



A Possibility 105 

We may have an enclosed ovary in which 
the possibilities of germ cells are realized 
and the phenomena of undifferentiated cells 
are manifested. My belief is that the 
brain is an enclosed ovary, with its contents 
of undifferentiated cells put to a new use, 
due to their isolation from the other sex 
elements with which they would normally 
come in contact. An illustration is found 
in plants, many of which have male and 
female flowers so isolated that the female 
flower is fertilized only by outside agencies 
carrying the male elements to it. Suppose 
one of these flowers were enclosed within the 
plant because growth was so rapid that it 
could not break through the envelope. There 
would then be an exposed ovary of one sex 
and an enclosed ovary of the other sex. If 
in part of the plants the female ovary and 
in others the male ovary were enclosed, the 
exposed or outer ovaries of these two plants 
could produce germs which, when brought 
into contact, would lead to reproduction and 
thus perpetuate the plant. An animal, in my 
opinion, differs from a plant in this way; it 



io6 Heredity and Social Progress 

has an enclosed ovary which in its develop- 
ment becomes a head, and an exposed or out- 
side ovary which takes part in reproduction. 
The head of a female would be male, while 
the head of a male is female. This origin 
of the head demands no other elements than 
those known to exist in the simpler phenomena 
of cell life. 

There is an even less complex hypothesis 
than this, although it offers fewer analyses to 
prove it a possible line of development. When, 
in fertilization, the male element enters the 
female cell, the two nuclei join into one which 
may not lose the identity of either. In 
each the chromosomes have been reduced to 
half of their normal number, a fact which 
has been taken to imply that in the union a 
single nucleus is formed with the proper num- 
ber of chromosomes, one half coming from the 
male, and the other from the female. Another 
interpretation is, however, possible. The reduc- 
tion in each germ, whereby some of its elements 
are lost, may have been due to an emotion by 
which the more specialized parts were thrown 
off. A regeneration could then make each 



A Possibility 107 

nucleus complete. If the two nuclei, reduced 
to their lowest terms by the loss of the more 
specialized parts, unite, they may not merge; 
each may seek to complete itself through re- 
generation. The two might then join in the pro- 
duction of the lost parts, so that they would be 
double in the parts retained, and single in the 
restored parts. As the specialized parts are 
the limbs and other accessories, the head, and 
perhaps some of the internal organs, would be 
double, while the motor organs would be new 
and single. They would be the outcome of 
the tendencies of both organisms and would 
serve for both, the result being a double mon- 
ster such as sometimes appears when the two 
nuclei develop independently. Certainly an 
analogy for such a combination is found in 
the established cases of births possessing two 
heads or bodies and one pair of limbs. If 
through the inequalities of growth the one 
nucleus grows more rapidly than the other, 
the former will enclose the latter and throw 
its envelope about it so that it cannot break 
loose and assert itself. When the latter begins 
to grow, it will distort and transform the outer 



io8 Heredity and Social Progress 

body in which it is enclosed, but it will not 
be able to escape. All its phenomena will be 
internal and its influence on the world beyond 
must be through the agency of the outer body 
in which it lies buried. There would be 
two beings partly united, in one of whom 
growth, and in the other reproduction, is domi- 
nant. The former would make up the mass of 
the body; the latter would be mainly nerves 
and head. The new parts are due to germs 
enclosed, and transformed into more or less 
specialized parts. 

The outer body represents a tendency 
towards mass and bulk ; the inner body is a 
struggle of germs to break forth, and of the 
effects of the failure to do this. All the phe- 
nomena of sex life are repeated again and 
again, but the ultimate end is not reached 
because the germs of the other sex can never 
reach the enclosed ovary. Consciousness, in 
its primary form, is aroused by the irritation 
and stimulation accompanying the creation of 
sex products. Not memory nor will, as we 
know them, is the first product of conscious- 
ness; it is visualization — fancy. The visuali- 



A Possibility 109 

zation due to irritation in the sexual organs is 
the readiest and most vivid form that men 
experience. Other forms could not come into 
existence if sex visualization had not in its 
struggles wrought out the means by which 
they express themselves. 

If these statements in any way represent 
what actually takes place, consequences follow 
which, in a measure, conform to what we know 
of organic development. The outer body may 
be said to be in a struggle with the inner body. 
It has growth on its side and makes organs in 
harmony with its needs, while the inner body, 
inferior in growth, is superior as a means of 
propagating nervous currents. It, then, is the 
source of emotions which cut down the outer 
body and retard its specialization. It endeavors 
to produce various organs in the embryo, but 
the inner emotions cause reductions that dis- 
place them. The embryo goes through a series 
of partial developments which are never com- 
pleted because of the lack of harmony between 
the outer and inner bodies. So long as new 
emotions arise from new nervous developments, 
the organs of the body can never be in equilib- 



no Heredity and Social Progress 

rium, and its structure cannot have the stability 
on which depends the attainment of fixed ends. 
Growth in the outer body makes folds, and 
they, as incipient ovaries, give off germs which 
in confinement become nerves. The new nerves, 
when organized with those already existing, 
rouse new emotions, and these again reduce 
the outer body to a mass ; and then new 
growths begin a new cycle that ends in a 
fresh reduction of the outer body to a lower 
form of organism. 

It would harmonize with my thought if we 
should consider the sympathetic system of 
nerves, with its automatic action, as a part 
of the outer body — a remnant of the many 
struggles that it has had with the inner body 
and its central nervous system. It is this 
vasomotor system that suffers the most in 
the expression of the emotions, and there 
occur most of the reductions which they cause. 
In it we almost have a body without a mind, 
and in the inner organism we, to a like de- 
gree, have a mind without a body. The outer 
body attains mass, but loses the specialization 
which creates form, while the inner body re- 



A Possibility iii 

tains its form but loses the mass, which, if 
retained, would make for it a fitting body. 
Two abnormal creatures are thus united in a 
being with both form and mass. We might 
regard a head as an ovary with retained sex 
products, which, in their activity and strug- 
gles, create consciousness. It must be thought 
of as a low form of organism — a colony of 
germs, each of which has a possibility of 
growth to give to it body, but not enough to 
make an effective independent unit. 

A complex organism of this kind would have 
two ovaries — an internal one, either male or 
female, and an external one of the other sex. 
The internal ovary, as a brain, can determine 
the actions and form of the whole organism, 
but it cannot propagate itself. The external 
and subordinated ovary of the female would 
unite its products with similar products from 
the external and subordinated ovary of the 
male. That which effects the subsequent gen- 
eration is the union of the germs of the 
outer bodies of the two parents — the parts of 
them that have been reduced to mass and 
hence have never gone through any, or, at 



1 1 3 Heredity and Social Progress 

least, through only a slight evolution. The 
real developing body — that through which all 
the adjustment to the outer world is made — 
leaves no progeny, because its germs are en- 
closed and isolated. 

This reasoning, though different from that of 
Professor Weismann, comes practically to the 
same conclusion. All the changes through 
which organisms go, because of their form and 
contact with the outer world, have little or no 
effect on the fertilized germ, because the body 
of which it is a part has not participated in 
the development through which the parent 
organism has gone. This, as I view it, is not 
because the germ plasm is not capable of 
change, but because the body from which it 
arises has not undergone change. So far as 
it has been affected by the changes through 
which the organism has gone, they have been 
disadvantageous and not beneficial. Could the 
inner germs of the two parents have been 
united, the result might have been different, 
for then the effect of individual experience on 
sex germs might have been tested. The con- 
tinuity of the germ plasm, although a fact, may 



A Possibility 113 

be so not from any inherent difficulty in mak- 
ing a change in it, but from the difficulty of 
getting the germ plasm in which the change 
has been made into a position where it can be 
fertilized, and thus permit of its continuation. 
The changed germ has a brilliant record as 
the source of consciousness, but it must lead 
the life of a celibate and leave no progeny. 
Professor Weismann assumes that there is 
a doubling division of the cell, in which each 
resulting mass is precisely like the other, and 
also differentiating divisions, by which one set of 
determinants is marshalled in one portion, and 
the other set in the other portion. Doubling 
divisions yield germ cells, and differenti- 
ating divisions yield somatic cells. Professor 
Hertwig, in opposition to this, affirms that all 
divisions are doubling divisions.^ I am in- 
clined to take the other alternative and affirm 
that all divisions, except in the simplest organ- 
isms, are differentiating. Growth must be 
dominant to produce a group of related cells, 
and while it is dominant, the complexity of 
relations and the increased strength of the 

^ See his " Biological Problem of To-day," p. tt- 



114 Heredity and Social Progress 

envelope cause cells to become increasingly 
complex by preventing that quick, complete 
division characteristic of unicellular organism. 
Differentiating division is little more than in- 
complete division, by which parts readily 
thrown off under simpler conditions are re- 
tained and aggregated in ways least hostile 
to further union. This tendency results 
in increased complexity and differentiation so 
long as growth is dominant. When, however, 
the process has been carried so far as to make 
the union unstable, or when the growth forces 
slacken, the delayed divisions complete them- 
selves, and some, at least, of the cells are 
brought back to their original simplicity. 
Germ cells are therefore not simple divisions 
of the first cell, but are at the end of a curve 
of development which in its first part becomes 
increasingly complex, and in the latter part, 
through devolution, regains the simple state of 
the first cell. The germ cell, ready for fertili- 
zation after the final reduction, is not then 
a simple division of the ancestral germ, but is 
the last stage of a devolution that separates it 
from the parent organism. 



A Possibility 115 



SUMMARY 

1. If folds become ovaries, where sex products generate, 
each organism has enclosed ovaries that open inward and 
exposed ovaries that open outward. If both of these 
break through the envelope, forms of life arise with two 
sexes, as in the case of some plants. If one remains 
enclosed, it becomes, in its struggle for freedom, a seat 
of consciousness with all the phenomena that sex irritation 
can create. This, in its primary form, is not memory and 
will, but visualization — a struggle to picture the comple- 
mentary self with which its isolated position prevents it 
from blending. 

2. A brain is thus an enclosed ovary with its contents of 
undifferentiated cells put to a new use. The enclosed ovary 
is of the opposite sex to the exposed ovary, and hence 
beings manifest mentally the characteristics of the opposite 
sex from what they are physically. 

3. This is one possibiUty. The same results follow if each 
of the two nuclei which come together in fertilization 
keeps its independent Ufe but unites to create the motor 
organs on which development and adjustment depend. One 
nucleus becomes enclosed, and in its development creates 
the spinal cord and brain. 

4. A third possibility is that the union of the male and 
female nuclei forms a neutral base from which there is a 
complementary differentiation. In the one direction the 
cells tend to become anabolic and in the other katabolic. 
The organism is male or female, as the anabolic or kata- 
bolic cells dominate in growth and enclose their weaker 



1 1 6 Heredity and Social Progress 

rivals. Germ cells and thought cells are at the ends of 
the series, but which is the one and which the other depends 
on the accidents of growth. The differentiation of cells and 
the conversion of one group of sex cells into thought cells 
would happen in either case. 

5. Nerves are not the result of mere growth through 
which complexity and differentiation increase. Before they 
appear devolution must create tendencies toward reproduc- 
tion. The subsequent regeneration of these parts in con- 
finement transforms what would be motor organs into 
nerves. Losing the power of movement they become the 
paths over which nervous impulses are transmitted. 



CHAPTER X 

Devolution 

Growth is usually contrasted with death, for 
when the period of growth ends the decay 
begins that ends in death. Growth should, 
however, be contrasted with devolution — a 
tendency of complex organisms to break up 
into parts. Even if this rupture is accom- 
panied by decay of the organism, regeneration 
may take place if there is a sound core in 
either part, and the organism be brought back 
to its former vigor. At least this is true of 
many animals, and if the preceding argument 
is correct, the principle holds for all organ- 
isms. Growth is not a steady process. There 
are periods of increasing specialization, of de- 
specialization, and of simplification, these in 
turn being followed by regeneration and new 
growth. The regeneration of parts follows 
unless the disruption prevents access to nutri- 

117 



1 1 8 Heredity and Social Progress 

ment. Death is not due to katabolic destruc- 
tion, but to the failure of the anabolic process 
which naturally follows it. Nature gives to all 
organisms the means of ejecting waste material. 
It is not, therefore, destruction but starvation 
which causes death. The disease which is not 
starvation is due to the uneliminated refuse 
that blocks the access of nutrition or forms 
noxious chemical compounds. 

The nutriment that is transformed into cells 
is not all deposited at one part to feed continu- 
ous growth, but at two or more alternating 
parts. If growth begins at an undifferentiated 
cell, additions will be made first on one side 
and then on the other. The formation of new 
cells continues as long as nutrition permits this 
alternating activity. To arrest growth on one 
side is to arrest it on the other, since one side 
cannot be continuously anabolic. Let us sup- 
pose one side to be injured through disruption, 
and its complexity reduced several degrees: 
in order for growth to start afresh, the other 
side must be correspondingly cut; this is ac- 
complished by means of disruptive discharges 
which wear away the one-sided growth until a 



Devolution 1 1 9 

point of equilibrium with the other side is 
attained. Then growth begins, and both sides 
are restored to their former completeness. 
Growth being bilateral, a set-back on one side 
must be followed by a set-back on the other be- 
fore a forward movement can be resumed. It 
is a balanced process demanding an equilibrium 
as a basis of its activity. 

This fact necessitates devolution in complex 
life processes. Single cells cannot be added 
to restore an equilibrium between two sides, 
although these cells may be destroyed and 
eliminated. Vital equilibriums are, therefore, 
obtained by backward movements; balance is 
restored by a subtraction, not by an addition. 
If a plank be so balanced that a slight differ- 
ence in the weight of the two sides will dis- 
turb it, a block may be added first to one side 
and then to the other until a large number is 
piled on each side. If a dozen blocks were 
suddenly knocked off one side, the only way to 
keep the equilibrium would be to knock off a 
dozen from the other. Then the original num- 
ber might be restored by adding one at a time. 
Addition is a slow process ; subtraction may be 



I20 Heredity and Social Progress 

a swift one. Rapid shiftings of large amounts 
are made by subtraction in every process 
where equilibrium is preserved. Vital pro- 
cesses also depend on this principle. Growth 
alternates between two parts, while the de- 
struction, which disturbs the equilibrium on 
which growth depends, is limited to one part. 
Devolution must, therefore, operate as the 
subtracting force upon related parts until an 
equilibrium is formed. Then growth asserts 
itself and life is revived. 

The agent of devolution is emotion. Ad- 
verse conditions, the source of emotions, cause 
a shock or a nervous explosion which follows, 
not the bilateral paths of structure, but the 
most direct routes for its dispersion. If this 
leaves the organism in an unbalanced condi- 
tion, devolution must create an equality by cut- 
ting back the unaffected parts until growth can 
assume its normal course. Emotions always 
arise where there is a lack of balance between 
two related parts, and disruptive activity con- 
tinues until despecialization and simplification 
restore the equilibrium. Unbalanced kata- 
bolic processes destroy until the restored 



Devolution 



121 



equilibrium permits nutrition again to act. 
Isolated katabolism brings dissolution ; ka- 
tabolism alternating with anabolism permits 
growth. Disruptive katabolism, emotion, and 
devolution are one, and they ensue when there 
is a disturbed equilibrium within the organism, 
or adverse elements outside of it. They act 
upon the organism until the new conditions are 
met, when a forward movement takes place 
along new lines. 

These facts have a practical significance in 
the sudden cures arising from emotional causes. 
Disease causes false growth at particular points, 
and in order to preserve equilibrium, false 
growths occur at other points. An explosive 
emotion disrupts some of them, and then the 
lack of equilibrium starts other destructive 
forces which do not cease until the whole 
organism is placed in a new and simpler 
balance. Then new growth can take place to 
restore the former complexity in healthy direc- 
tions. Destructive losses may weaken, but if 
unhealthy parts are eliminated, a new vigor 
may soon be attained, and the organism be 
restored to its former condition. 



122 Heredity mtd Social Progress 

Emotional cures are associated with reli- 
gion and are looked upon as miracles by 
those who believe in them, and are doubted 
by those who reject them ; but there is 
no need of so classing them if the prin- 
ciples of devolution and regeneration are 
understood. That which is marvellous as an 
unexplained fact becomes simple if viewed as 
a natural event. Religious excitement creates 
nervous shocks which disturb balance, devo- 
lution acts to restore the equilibrium, and then 
regeneration creates a healthy organism. Dis- 
ease is thus eliminated by cutting off its 
false growths. 

Any strong emotion will do this if its activ- 
ity affects the diseased parts. Even a change 
of environment may create the needed emo- 
tions and give back health, but here, in dis- 
tinction from the cures effected by religious 
emotion, there seems to be a growth and not a 
set-back that eliminates. In this case, how- 
ever, we must remember that the emotions of 
the change precede, and that they incite the 
devolutional forces of regeneration. A game 
of cards, a night at the gambling table, or the 



Devolution 123 

sudden plunge into dissipation of an over- 
worked man may, by creating strong emo- 
tions, also effect cures/ 

A shock acts more quickly than thought, 
and when the physical change is made, the 
return of normal conditions does not restore 
the original state. We often speak of those 
breaks as a change in the current of thought 
and imagine this to be an explanation, as 
though a current of thought had no physical 
background. Ideas, however, act through 
structure which must change in order to 
permit a change in the current of thought. 
There must be a devolution of structure to 



^ An incident which occurred while I was writing this essay 
well illustrates emotional effects. I was taking a walk in the 
depressed mood which is the natural result of melancholy and 
the discouragement and isolation belonging to it. Happening to 
look up, I saw above the tree tops in large and vivid letters the 
word " love." A man must be constituted differently from me 
not to be strongly moved by the sudden shock of the sight. It 
seemed an unaccountable event, and yet, the cause was simple 
enough. I was approaching a hotel on the top of which the 
landlord had put a sign. The trees had grown from the side I 
was approaching in such a manner that they hid everything but 
those four letters of one of the words of the sign. To recognize 
this took but an instant, but in that instant a change was wrought 
which cured my melancholy. 



124 Heredity and Social Progress 

break one current, and the growth of another 
to permit new ideas or to bring them back 
to normal channels. These physical changes 
due to emotion are, I take it, the causes of 
the cures of every deep religious awakening 
of the past, now so often heard of in connec- 
tion with Christian Science. Ideas move 
through structure ; morbid structure forces 
thought into depressing channels, but excise 
this structure, and a new growth will bring 
back the elation of health and its faiths and 
convictions. 

It is a mistake to assume that a sudden 
cure must have some powerful cause. In 
truth, the slightest causes are likely to pro- 
duce emotional effects ; the only condition for 
their efficiency is that they shall be unex- 
pected and shall strike bodily structure ad- 
versely and without warning. However slight 
this disturbance may be, the principle of 
equilibrium will do the rest. Disease is not 
necessarily decay ; it is sometimes a false 
growth and follows the laws of growth. Devo- 
lution must precede any normal growth, and 
for this end emotion is most effective. 



Devolution 125 

And why is this devolution easy? In the 
first place, because organisms are bilateral and 
growth alternates between the two sides. But 
more than this, human beings, at least, are a 
combination of anabolic and katabolic ten- 
dencies between which a constant equilibrium 
must be preserved, as it is in men, whose inner 
being or mind is anabolic and whose outer 
body is katabolic, and with women in whom 
the opposite is true. Each self acts on the 
other, not directly through muscles or nerves, 
but through emotions. The outer body must 
despecialize to match the conditions of the 
inner body, and the inner body by the same 
resource must attain an equilibrium with the 
outer body. The equilibrium comes in all 
cases indirectly through devolution, and not 
directly through growth. Any divergent ten- 
dencies are cut off by emotional set-backs 
which cease only when the two parts receive 
a common impulse to grow in one direction. 
Devolution is thus easy, effective, and in- 
creasingly prominent as organisms rise in the 
scale of being. 

Physiologists seem recently to have proved 



126 Heredity and Social Progress 

that life is a series of ferments.^ Growth is 
obtained by one series of ferments, and a cut- 
ting back or dwarfing results from another. 
The process of growth is thus reversible. An 
organism grows under favorable contact and 
draws back or shrivels under adverse con- 
tact. If this is true of the chemical ferments 
in cells it confirms my contention that ad- 
verse contact incites devolutional forces among 
the cells of an organism, and reduces the 
parts they affect to a greater simplicity. 
Every adverse contact with the environment 
brings a recoil, and the emotion is the psy- 
chic expression of its physical effects. Growth 
begins anew when the adverse contact ceases. 
Beings do not adjust themselves to an envi- 
ronment and afterward remain stationary until 
a new adjustment is made possible by changed 
conditions. They continually press forward 
toward new adjustments and then are set 
back by adverse contact. These constant for- 
ward and backward movements make regen- 
eration possible and give a plasticity to tissues 

1 See an article on " The Newest Concepts of Life " by Carl 
Snyder, in Harper's Magazine, November, 1902. 



Devolution 127 

and organs which causes them to respond 
more fully to the environing conditions. Life 
is a rhythm between favorable and unfavor- 
able contact, and each higher form of life is 
an expression, in some complex way, of the 
primary rhythm on which all life depends. 

SUMMARY 

1. Growth is not a steady process. Periods of increas- 
ing specialization are followed by others of despecialization 
and simplification. Regeneration follows disruption if 
access to material is not prevented. 

2. When growth starts from an undifferentiated cell, new 
cells are added alternately on each side, so that a balance 
is maintained. If growth stops on one side, it ceases on the 
other. When one side is cut back or ruptured, the other 
must be reduced to a Hke degree before fresh growth 
begins. 

3. This cutting back is devolution. EquiUbriums are 
obtained by backward movements. Sudden changes are 
made by subtraction, not by addition. 

4. The agent of devolution is emotion. It arises when 
there is a lack of balance between two related parts and pro- 
duces shocks until despecialization restores the equilibrium. 
Tendencies toward an equilibrium are tendencies toward 
simplification, which remain active until the complexity and 
differentiation of growth disappear. Then fresh growth re- 
stores all, or even more, than was lost. 

5. Emotion may thus be the cause of cures. Many dis- 



128 Heredity and Social Progress 

eases are not a cause of decay, but a false growth which an 
explosive emotion may disrupt. The organism through devo- 
lution is cut back until only a sound core remains, and then 
new growth in normal directions restores health. 

6. Ideas act through structure, and this must be altered 
to permit a change in the current of thought. A devolution 
of structure breaks one current, and a new growth arouses 
another. Regeneration is not a mere mental state; it 
involves a physical change. 



CHAPTER XI 
Character 

If the shock of non-adjustment arouses 
emotions, and these emotions induce a devo- 
lution which cuts the organism back to simpler 
forms, the question arises whether there is not 
a reverse process by which motives arising in 
organisms may force changes in the environ- 
ment. In short, does any shock of non-adjust- 
ment arouse impulses which seek an outlet in 
ways modifying present surroundings or com- 
pelling a movement away from them ? If 
there is no such impulse, we must assume that 
all changes begin in the environment and end 
in modifications of the adjustment-seeking 
organisms. 

There is at least a strong popular belief in 
such motives and their effects. We custom- 
arily say that men " have character," when, 
in distinguishing them from the mere passive 
recipients of environmental pressure, we point 

K 129 



130 Heredity and Social Progress 

to their power of resistance against it, and to 
their developing force acting on other persons, 
or on external conditions. 

To determine the truth of this distinction 
we must start from the economic conditions 
upon which life depends. An economic sur- 
plus is followed, first, by organic growth and 
then by emotional changes that disturb present 
adjustment, and force an entrance into a new 
environment where the new characters find a 
field of activity, and bring about a new adjust- 
ment. But an economic deficit blocks the first 
step in this series of changes. It not only pre- 
vents the formation of new tissues and organs, 
but it hardens those already in use and con- 
fines the flow of nervous currents to increas- 
ingly definite channels ; it therefore aids in the 
formation of acquired characters which help the 
individual in his own adjustment to present 
conditions, but are not inherited by his de- 
scendants. A deficit does not develop new 
natural characters ; it can become a cause 
of progress only by conscious means, and 
through agencies which must be evoked anew 
in each generation. With it is handed down, 



Character ^ 131 

from father to son, a tradition, a custom, a 
moral rule, or an imitation, but not an organic 
modification. It is a psychic, not a biologic, 
inheritance, and represents the sum of the 
acquired characters that have proven of use to 
the species or the race. If acquired characters 
are not inherited, a local situation cannot 
mould character; they will be made effective 
only through tradition, morality, and imitation. 
Deficits act through these agents, and force 
upon each age the acquired characters of past 
ages in a strict routine from which no escape 
is possible. 

A surplus, however, creating organic modi- 
fications finds a psychic expression in an im- 
pulse. I define an impulse as surplus energy 
not used in routine acts. This energy effects 
changes, but has no fixed routes of exit. Let 
us notice the result of this distinction : deficits 
build tradition, morality, and imitation, through 
which activity is forced into fixed channels use- 
ful in the present situation; a surplus makes 
organic changes and evokes impulses which 
have no fixed channel. This flow of energy, 
modifying organism and environment, is the 



132 Heredity and Social Progress 

source of natural characters which destroy pres- 
ent adjustment and so alter the environment 
that better adjustment is possible. 

It is these natural characters which, summed 
into the name " character," are so highly prized 
by society. We admire in a man the willing- 
ness and ability to confront his environment 
and to transform it to suit his purposes. Char- 
acter is the culmination of a series begun by a 
surplus, just as morality and imitation end the 
series in which a deficit is the first term. 

If surplus energy in the form of impulse 
were the only effect of an economic surplus, 
the persons who first enjoyed it would be im- 
pelled to increased activity, while in their 
descendants resultant organic modifications 
would ultimately develop natural characters. 
Then "character," as we use that term, ap- 
pearing in descendants, rather than in those 
who had created the economic surplus, would 
be a thing of slow formation and not that 
rapid transformation we so often see. There 
is, however, a possible alternative. Every com- 
plex being has partially used organs which are 
capable of being more fully aroused anew. In 



Character 133 

the transit to new environments some parts of 
use in earlier times or in earlier stages of de- 
velopment become dormant and are not called 
into activity so long as an economic deficit pre- 
vents the generation of surplus energy. Rou- 
tine activity makes the first claim on energy, 
and if there is no surplus, absorbs it all. But 
with better economic conditions comes a flow 
of surplus energy which will not be exhausted 
in routine activity, but will seek exit through the 
unused parts and stimulate them to a renewed 
activity. Muscles developed for walking may 
now be used in the dance ; vocal organs de- 
veloped for speech may now be used in song; 
and finger muscles developed in plain acts 
of grasping may now be trained to intricate 
coordination in playing a musical instrument, 
or applied with increasing complexity in the 
deft manipulation of the finer manual arts. 

The transformation of organs is greater than 
is implied by these illustrations. If there is 
an element of truth in what I have said about 
the existence of an outer and an inner body, 
each physical organ has a correlative structure 
in the central nerve ganglia. As the outer body 



134 Heredity and Social P^'ogress 

goes through the various stages of development 
from the embryo to maturity, a series of organs 
appears and then disappears. There is ap- 
parently no force cutting back the inner nervous 
structure. After an embryo has gone through 
the fish stage, the outer organs of the fish dis- 
appear, but the psychic mechanism that moved 
these organs may remain. Advanced beings 
may then have fish thoughts — imitation, for ex- 
ample — without any visible fish organs. There 
are thus many inner processes that have no 
outer expression, or at least the outer organ is 
much dwarfed and seldom vitalized with energy. 
A flow of surplus energy through the brain 
makes these organs of inner expression active 
without an effective external expression. The 
nervous circuit then starts from the brain and 
brings back an impression apparently from the 
outside, but which in reality has been caused 
by the outflow of energy from the brain. Such 
impressions seem external, although created in 
the brain. They will modify the person's con- 
cept of the environment, and consequently his 
subsequent activity, as much as if they were 
really objective. Surplus energy can thus ob- 



Character 135 

jectify concepts and create beliefs by following 
definite paths — natural routes of exit laid down 
during an earlier development of the race which 
have always remained available and are again 
utilized by surplus energy. Definiteness of 
action is thereby assured to people with surplus 
energy which would not be possible without 
this earlier development and subsequent aban- 
donment of organs. On the other hand, the 
energy now flows in fixed channels counter to 
present conditions. We have this phenomenon 
illustrated by religious conversion, when a per- 
son under strong impulse changes his activity 
from wonted ways to the performance of 
deeds he had not desired to do in his previ- 
ous life. He now acts from motives hitherto 
unknown, and opposes himself to his environ- 
ment and to the demands of his earlier expe- 
rience. A gulf divides his life, and he has 
an impetus toward forms of activity which 
will become effective only through radical 
changes in the environment or in social con- 
ditions. A surplus is quickly transformed into 
emotions and impulses which make men dis- 
contented with existing conditions, and the 



136 Heredity aitd Social Progress 

activity evoked we accept as evidence of char- 
acter. Deficits arouse one part of a person ; 
surpluses arouse another. The first ends in a 
tradition, a moraHty, and other acquired charac- 
ters ; the second is the source of new natural 
characters not produced by the routine of life. 

Character represents the sum of psychic 
forces adverse to environment ; emotion has 
its origin in the environmental elements ad- 
verse to the being which seeks adjustment. 
Character destroys adjustment by modifying 
the environment, emotion by modifying men. 
Neither emotion nor character completes itself 
in mere adjustment to existent conditions. 
When aroused by a surplus both impel toward 
a super-adjustment which demands more ele- 
ments for a complete harmony than are found 
in the present wrought-out adjustment. The 
equilibrium sought by character and by emo- 
tion is not in the acquisition of the good, — the 
summum bonum of experience, — but in some- 
thing beyond the goal of conscious utilitarian- 
ism. There is a super bonum which includes 
this good and more, and only when surplus en- 
ergy incites a movement toward this complete 



Character 137 

end, are the natural impulses and emotions 
fully satisfied. 

If deficits end in acquired characters, such as 
local traditions and a moral code, they will im- 
press motives of economy and of self-assertion. 
Selfishness is a consciously acquired aptitude 
due to existence under conditions which have 
created a deficit. Self-interest acts either 
through imitation or through a rational utili- 
tarianism. It is not a natural character; it is 
the acquired result of a deficit. Altruism, 
however, is an inherited impulse aroused by 
a surplus which moves outward through char- 
acters not created by the present environment 
and, hence, not determined by it in their ac- 
tivity. So long as the surplus continues, the 
conscious attitude of the recipient is altruistic 
and the surplus is used for other than indi- 
vidual ends. A struggle now begins between 
the motives resulting from a surplus which acts 
through newly aroused natural characters, and 
the rational or imitative habits which, as ac- 
quired characters, are impressed upon men 
by their inherited traditions. The intensity 
of selfishness is determined by the number of 



138 Heredity and Social Progress 

acquired characters that are effective in adjust- 
ment ; the intensity of altruistic impulses is 
likewise determined by the number of natural 
characters made active by a surplus. 

Acquired characters, it must again be said, 
result from the direct action of the present 
environment, while natural characters have 
sprung from conditions of earlier environ- 
ments no longer operative to force reactions 
in harmony with them. Inherited reactions 
are free from environmental control, and act, 
not only independently of it, but even directly 
contrary to it. A scientific analysis of char- 
acter thus justifies the popular view of it, and 
shows how resistance to the dominance of 
present conditions is the necessary precursor 
of any improvement in them. 

SUMMARY 

1. All natural characters are due to the indirect action 
of a social surplus. Deficits are guarded against by acquired 
characters. The conditions that cause an elimination are 
due to the presence of a deficit. Therefore a deficit cannot 
create structure or be the means of evoking natural char- 
acters. 

2. Character is action which modifies the environment 



Character 1 39 

instead of affecting adjustment. It represents the psychic 
forces adverse to the environment, and is equivalent 
to the natural characters of the biologists. Emotion is 
the subjective expression of the elements in the environ- 
ment adverse to the adjusted being. All new forms of 
natural adjustment are wrought out through these forces. 

3. The present environment does not act on men through 
natural, but only through acquired, characters. There spring 
up in each environment traditions, customs, and habits which 
must be retaught to each generation. 

4. Emotion and character do not complete themselves 
in present adjustment. They impel toward a super-adjust- 
ment in which future additional elements can be harmonized. 

5. Natural characters are made active only by surplus 
energy. A deficit renders them dormant and causes con- 
duct to be determined by the acquired characters of the 
present environment. Persons and classes living under a 
perpetual deficit have no opportunity to reveal their natural 
character. They must be controlled by tradition and imita- 
tion until a surplus destroys the dominance of acquired 
characters. 



CHAPTER XII 

The Inner Organs of Expression 

Acquired characters have no natural or- 
gans of expression. They become effective 
through emotions that arouse motor mechan- 
isms created for other ends. These acquired 
characters, faihng natural expression, when 
viewed from a social standpoint, are morality, 
tradition, habit, and imitation ; from a psy- 
chological standpoint they are associations 
or, more technically, associations of ideas. 
Starting from their economic antecedents, 
they are due to deficits that save energy by 
forcing economies. Surpluses forge structures 
through which the resulting ideas find their 
own means of exit, and, if they appropriate 
any of the existing structures as means of 
exit, they thereby destroy some traditions or 
imitations in the social world and some asso- 
ciations in the psychic field. 

140 



The Inner Organs of Expression 141 

Such social and psychic results of deficits 
massed together are the social heritage. The 
particular forms in which they appear in one 
generation would not reappear in the next if 
there were not some contact between the two 
generations and some discipline by which the 
ideas of fathers are impressed on sons. Few 
persons who follow biologic discussion will 
deny that traditions, morality, and other recog- 
nized social phenomena are acquired char- 
acters which lack natural means of expression. 
It does, however, seem that mental associa- 
tions are natural characters. 

To determine this point we must return to 
the elementary facts. Growth, I have often 
affirmed, is double. There is an inner neural 
body that parallels the outer body in its 
development, and between the two there is 
an interchange of effects, so that the devolu- 
tions and evolutions in the one effect similar 
changes in the other. There is a difference, 
however. The inner body, from its protected 
position, is less affected by evolutional and 
devolutional forces than is the outer body. A 
useless outer organ would be a serious detri- 



142 Heredity and Social Progress 

ment in survival and adjustment. Radical 
alterations in the environment must therefore 
make marked changes in those outer organs 
which affect immediate adjustment. If an 
organism changes from a life in the water to 
one on the land, devolution must cut off or 
powerfully alter the older organs and new 
organs must develop to supplement them 
where they are incapable of modification to 
meet the new conditions. By the force of 
these conditions the older organs in the outer 
bodies of men have practically disappeared. 
Men do not have the gills of fish or the 
tails of reptiles. 

If there is an inner body of parallel growth 
on which emotion and devolution have less 
effect, these primitive organs would remain 
and be capable of activity in men. We 
would, in other words, have fish thoughts, 
reptile thoughts, and monkey thoughts, even 
though the outer organs through which these 
inner organs once found expression no longer 
exist. Is there any way of testing this sup- 
position or of observing the activity of inner 
organs which have no outer organs of expres- 



The Inner Organs of Expression 143 

sion except through the motor organs of use 
in our present environment ? There is ; but 
in order to observe it, a distinction must be 
drawn between the inner and the outer or- 
gans of expression. The action of the outer 
organs of expression may be readily observed, 
for every movement visible to the eye is a 
result of their activity. We may likewise 
observe the effects of the inner organs of 
expression by examining the contents of con- 
sciousness. Associations of ideas are not mere 
passive relations, but are the results of the 
motor mechanism of the mind. Exactly as 
groups of motor centres act together when 
you instinctively grasp an object, so do cer- 
tain inner motor centres work together when 
you construct a thought from which other 
thoughts develop either as component parts 
of the primary concept or as its successors. 
The field of association, then, is the field of 
inner activity, and it enables us to measure 
the extent and the complexity of the motor 
mechanisms which are active in the mind. 

By comparing the field of associations with 
the field of external activity it can readily 



144 Heredity and Social Progress 

be seen that associations cover a much larger 
field than the field of bodily activity. Our 
ability and capacity to think is far greater 
than our ability and capacity to act. The 
inner mechanism is, therefore, much more 
varied and complex than the outer, a condi- 
tion which may be explained by assuming 
that the earlier organs of expression in ante- 
cedent life have been less completely dis- 
placed by evolution than have the outer 
organs of expression. 

Our assumption, if true, is of importance 
in connection with a vital biologic problem. 
Acquired characters cannot be inherited, but 
they can appropriate the disused inner motor 
organs not yet displaced by the stress of evo- 
lution. Primitive organs are so closely linked 
by associations to present activities which 
yield acquired characters that they are able 
to find a new method of external expression 
through the newly acquired activities with 
which they are united. Associations thus 
give to acquired activities a motor basis that 
they cannot create for themselves. 

One of the most obvious of these agents of 



The Inner Organs of Expression 145 

acquired characters is imitation. We say imi- 
tation is instinctive — rightly enough, if we 
mean mental reactions. But are there any 
bodily imitations — acts that the body per- 
forms by mere contact without any asso- 
ciation of ideas ? A generation ago the 
scratching of newly born chickens and a host 
of similar acts would have been accounted 
for in this wav, but in most, if not all cases, 
a better explanation is now given. Our outer 
bodies have passed the stage in their develop- 
ment in which imitation is an available means 
of adjustment; but the mechanism of imita- 
tion is inherited by the inner body and is 
made active through mental association which 
affords acquired characters, a method of propa- 
gation that otherwise would be lacking. 

A second agent of acquired characters is 
fear. The world was for ages filled with huge 
monsters which spread death and desolation. 
In weaker organisms fear made escape the best 
method of survival. Man belonged in this 
class, and for ages fear must have dominated 
him until it became an ingrained feeling which 
affected every tissue. But in the end man 



146 Heredity and Social Progress 

became the dominant animal, and the outer 
organs were remoulded to meet the new situ- 
ation. A new type of reactions was thus de- 
veloped, displacing fear. Contact with fire, for 
example, causes no fear in the outer body. 
The instinctive act is one of instant withdrawal. 
The burn acts on the hand in one way; the fear 
of a burn acts on the mind in another. We 
have no fears except those due to mental associ- 
ations. The thought of danger, due to an older 
reaction, brings mental fear, while the presence 
of real danger acting on the body gives cour- 
age. The inner and outer expressions are out 
of harmony because the outer expression re- 
flects present reality, while the inner expres- 
sion reflects only the past of the organism. 
The acquired characters are made effective 
through fear, which, in spite of our present 
environment, retains a place in our thoughts. 

The third agent of acquired characters is 
reason. We say, " It is either A, B, or C. It 
is not A ; it is not B ; it is therefore C," reject- 
ing a larger or smaller series of dissimilars be- 
fore a similar is accepted. Or, in other words, 
after a long series of dissimilars we predicate 



The Inner Organs of Expression 147 

the appearance of a similar. Are there any 
primitive animal functions that act in this way? 
If there are, reasoning may be the development 
of one of them. 

Recoil from the dissimilar and the accept- 
ance of the similar is an elementary tendency 
starting with life. The tiny amceba will ap- 
proach foreign substance and recoil from it 
if it is dissimilar ; it will repeat this act until it 
is brought into contact with a similar substance, 
and then it will absorb it. Recoil from dissim- 
ilars and the approach of similars are element- 
ary animal functions. Fear is the psychic 
expression of this bodily recoil ; curiosity is 
the psychic expression of approach. Concepts 
coming through the senses act on the mind 
through these agents as physical contact acts 
on the bodies of simple organisms. What 
more in essence is reasoning than this } I per- 
ceive no new element. Rather does reason 
seem to be the primary rhythm of the body 
which, having lost its external expression in 
many complex regenerations of the outer body, 
has become clarified in its internal expres- 
sion, and expresses itself psychically as reason. 



14S Heredity and Social Progress 

We have retained the simplicity of the uni- 
cellular organism in no place so plainly as in 
our reasoning: here consciousness shows its 
elementary and primitive character. No outer 
organ has its simplicity; digestion, for ex- 
ample, now demands a hundred independent 
reactions. 

These three agents of acquired characters 
— imitation, fear, and reason — are supple- 
mented by one of a different origin. I have 
said that the outer organs of expression are 
more subject to change than are the inner 
organs. The inner organs may therefore force 
modifications upon the outer organs which 
adapt them to conditions imposed by the rigid- 
ity of the inner organs as well as to the condi- 
tions set by the environment. The more rigid 
alters the less rigid ; the environment and the 
inner organs of expression being more rigid 
than the outer organs, the latter are cut back 
by the internally and externally excited emo- 
tions, after which they grow again to meet 
the new conditions. 

But this relative rigidity of the inner and 
outer organs may be changed by bodily disci- 



The Inner Organs of Expression 149 

pline. Repeated acts increase the definiteness 
of bodily reactions, and if the repetition is fre- 
quent and prolonged, the flow of emotion is 
from the rigidly disciplined outer organs in- 
ward to the now relatively less rigid inner 
organs of expression. The inner primitive 
organs become more plastic, evolve until they 
harmonize with the outer organs, and are at 
length regenerated to conform to present con- 
ditions. Therefore, while acquired characters 
cannot create new organs of expression, they 
can, through the discipline they impose, re- 
generate old organs, forcing them to express 
internally new objective conditions utilized by 
the acquired characters. Regeneration and con- 
version are not arbitrary phenomena, but the 
direct result of an imposed discipline. New 
forms of bodily discipline thus antedate each 
new emotion and each conversion. 

Let me put this thought in another light. 
Bodily emotion is the result of the surplus 
energy created by disciplined motor organs, and 
it affects and regenerates those inner organs 
of expression to which we give the name of 
mental activity. While these inner organs are 



150 Heredity and Social Progress 

natural one part of them is also primitive. I 
shall call those organs natural, which have cor- 
responding organs of outer expression, and 
those primitive which, having no external organs 
of expression, necessarily use organs over which 
they must accjuire control through mental asso- 
ciations before they can express themselves. 
When discipline, through a surplus, creates a 
bodily emotion, it makes the natural organs 
of inner expression more plastic and breaks 
up the associations that permit the primitive 
organs to dominate their activity. Strong emo- 
tions will do even more: they regenerate the 
primitive organs, and force them to receive 
concepts which shall be useful in the present 
environment rather than concepts which were 
natural in the earlier conditions upon which 
these organs developed. The concepts evoked 
by this regeneration we call ideals, and deem 
their acquisition of prime importance in the 
uplifting of individuals or of society. 

My contention is that ideals are not acquired 
directly through the senses, but are the indirect 
effects of that bodily discipline which creates 
surplus energy. An ethical impulse does not 



The Inner Organs of Expression 1 5 1 

start in the environment, affecting first the 
brain and then the body; it begins in im- 
proved bodily mechanisms, stimulates mental 
activity, and finally passes out over the motor 
organs to act on the environment. 

Emotion has two sources and the impulses 
involved have two routes of movement. The 
impulse may originate in the environment, enter 
the brain over sensory routes, form associa- 
tions, and arouse an emotion which will gain 
control of the motor organs; or the impulse 
may begin in these bodily organs as a result 
of an improved discipline and reverse the 
route travelled by the other class of impulses. 
The principle we have again and again em- 
phasized is that emotions cut back the organs, 
parts, or objects on which they focus. We 
have, on the one hand, centrally excited emo- 
tions which, by weakening mental associations, 
degenerate the body ; on the other hand, emo- 
tions and inward-going impulses which regen- 
erate and uplift. The sensory organs permit 
external impressions to gain direct admission 
to thought centres ; their emotional effects are 
outward-going and decadent. The develop- 



152 Hei'edity and Social Progress 

ment of the motor organs is such that motor 
reactions arise in every situation, and each 
faikire in adjustment is met by some motor 
reaction that protects the body. Only sur- 
pluses can pass this series of defences and 
become mental phenomena. But centrally 
excited emotions pass out over the motor 
organs along routes where no defences have 
been developed ; they are therefore decadent. 
Bodily emotions, however, arising, as they do, 
from an improved discipline, are upbuilding 
forces. 

The distinction becomes more evident by 
contrasting the environment of the sensory 
with that of the motor organs. When defects 
in adjustment affect a motor organ, it develops 
instinctive adjustments by which injury is pre- 
vented. A man going over a rough road 
calls into action a hundred instinctive move- 
ments which remedy the defects of the road. 
The motor environment is provided for by 
organic adjustments. But no natural safe- 
guards exist to remedy the defects of the 
sensory environment. The shocks of non- 
adjustment go direct to the mind, disturb its 



The Inner Organs of Expression 153 

delicate adjustments, arouse a sense of fear, 
and then depress or disarrange the motor 
organs by striking them in the rear. The 
only defence against the evils of centrally 
excited impressions lies in discipline. Where 
there is no natural defence one must be built 
up. The discipline of the inner organs of 
expression is mental association ; that of the 
outer organs is in the motor response of 
manual training. 

Centrally excited emotions are an evil unless 
held in check by one of these means. The 
sensory environment extends so far beyond 
the real environment that no natural adjust- 
ment is possible to much of this realm. A 
vague pseudo-environment exists of which the 
mental effect is fear and the bodily effect is 
nervousness. The only emotion worth any- 
thing is the emotion due to the surplus 
energy generated by some bodily mechanism. 
Centrally excited emotions often come from 
a pseudo-environment that is not vital, and 
in their activity they break the discipline on 
which all upbuilding processes depend. 



154 Heredity and Social Progress 



SUMMARY 

1. Since growth in higher organisms is double, there are 
two groups of organs through which energy is expressed. 
The expression of the outer organs is through bodily move- 
ments ; that of the inner neural organs reveals itself through 
mental associations. These inner organs of expression are 
the vehicle of acquired characters. They are cut back by 
devolution less fully than the outer organs, and hence many 
inner organs of expression which have no parallel outer 
organs persist from earlier stages of development. These 
primitive organs are linked to the acquired characters which 
through them obtain organs of expression. 

2. All acquired characters act on the mind through the 
association of ideas ; they never evoke new agencies through 
which to act. The agents of the acquired characters are 
imitation, fear, and reasoning. Each of these is the devel- 
opment of primitive characters which now have no outer 
organs of expression. 

3. Another agent of the acquired characters is disci- 
pline. It acts primarily on the outer organs of expression 
and makes them so rigid that emotions pass inward and 
regenerate the primitive organs utilized by the acquired 
characters. The ingoing bodily emotions are so safe- 
guarded by instinct that they cannot injure the bodily or 
mental mechanisms. Against centrally excited sensory 
emotions, however, there are no safeguards. Their physi- 
cal expression is nervousness ; their psychical expression 
is melancholy ; their social expression is decadence ; and 
their expression in trade and industry is a commercial 
panic. 



The Inner Organs of Expression 155 

4. Selfishness is self as an object of fear. Ethical 
impulse, however, is not sensory. It is an expression of 
the surplus created by bodily discipline. Starting from 
bodily mechanisms, it moves inward with a regenerating 
force and then outward over improved motor organs. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Some Terms 

Psychological terms, derived from common 
usage, have become more numerous than the 
real distinctions they have to make, and are 
used so loosely that they overlap each other. 
A fitting vocabulary cannot be formed by mere 
inductive studies. There is no certainty that 
the distinctions are real unless they correspond 
to the physiological facts that create or are 
synchronous with the psychic manifestations. 
Every mental fact has some physical expression. 
The test, therefore, of the reality of a psychic 
distinction is its correspondence to a physical 
difference, and this test should be applied in 
defining terms. 

Will and attention are often confused, as 
when we say we will to give attention. Will- 
ing is, however, rising katabolism — innerva- 
tion of the part aroused and a stronger flow of 

156 



Some Terms 157 

energy. The resultant act becomes more pro- 
nounced with the intensification and persist- 
ence of the katabolic destruction. In other 
words, we will better, and with increased power, 
if we act with speed and with a quick response in 
energy. A strong will, therefore, indicates that 
katabolic centres are dominant ; a weaker will 
implies that anabolic centres, with their slower 
and less effective responses, are in ascendance. 
These responses are attention — a quality of 
anabolism, because in anabolic cells, at every 
step, changes take place more slowly, and also 
continue longer, than they do in katabolic cells. 
Such cells, then, afford more time for attention, 
and prolonged attention checks bodily changes.^ 
Willing and attention are opposites. Men 
with strong wills are poor at analytic thought, 
and careful thinkers hesitate when in action. 
As we gain in will, we lose in thought power, 
and we gain in thought as we lose in will 
power. 

An application of this truth brings us back 
to the assumption that each being is a com- 
bination of two selves, one anabolic and the 

1 Ribot, " The Psychology of Attention," p. 20. 



158 Heredity and Social Progress 

other katabolic. In woman the outer body is 
anabolic, the inner is katabolic; in men the 
opposite is true. The well-known mental pecu- 
liarities of the sexes correspond to this differ- 
ence : men are good thinkers, that is, innerly 
anabolic; while women are quick in decision; 
that is, innerly katabolic. If the metaboHc 
changes back of thought come quick and 
strong, decision is prompt and accurate. If 
they are slow, attention and analysis are good, 
but action is less effective. 

The word "emotion," so often used in an 
indefinite way, is used by me as the index of 
bodily changes. When defined in this way 
pleasure is not an emotion but an alternating 
discharge of surplus energy and is therefore 
to be associated with growth. We find pleas- 
ure in the causes that create growth, and emo- 
tion in the adverse elements which, reducing 
the organism, permit regeneration. 

Viewed organically there are three funda- 
mental processes — growth, devolution, and re- 
generation. Organisms grow under favorable 
conditions. They devolve towards their undif- 
ferentiated beginnings under adverse condi- 



Some Terms 159 

tions, and then they regenerate when these 
adverse conditions have been overcome or 
avoided. The psychic expression of growth is 
pleasure ; that of devolution is emotion, and 
that of regeneration is will. Will is an expres- 
sion of the reaction against adverse conditions 
and is an indication of the passing over from a 
state of devolution to one of renewed growth. 
Will is non-mechanical because the preceding 
devolution has destroyed the structure through 
which energy would act. In regeneration new 
structure is created. The non-mechanical feel- 
ing before the structure is created is will ; the 
mechanical feeling after the structure is created 
is pleasure. Will precedes structural growth ; 
pleasure follows it. 

There is a third feeling with a bodily cause 
which falls under neither of these heads. I 
shall call it elation, although in its intense 
forms it is better known as ecstasy. It is the 
feeling of a dormant part made active by 
unusual conditions. Elation arouses the 
whole organism and makes it respond readily 
to mental stimuli. Under ordinary conditions 
only a part of each organism is really alive in 



i6o Heredity and Social Progress 

the sense of creating the changes on which 
life depends. Men are usually much below 
the limit of their possibilities, and in reaching 
this limit they stir up powers and make parts 
active that on ordinary occasions do not act, 
or at least act rather ineffectively. Elation is 
the pleasure of these revived activities. It is 
always combined with increased power of vis- 
ualization in which a complement is pictured ; 
the idea of the absent member arouses the 
stimuli and causes the bodily effects which the 
presence of the absent member would have 
aroused. Associated ideas stand in the place 
of concrete stimuli and affect what they would 
have affected. 

Let us put this concept into a concrete form 
by thinking of the outer and inner body in 
harmonious relations, so that there is a part in 
the one correlated to every part in the other. 
Now cut away the related part in one body, 
and the corresponding part in the other body 
becomes dormant. Visualization excites the 
thought which this absent part would have 
naturally created, and this thought is the 
stimulus that arouses the corresponding part 



Some Terms i6i 

in the outer body. The thought and the feel- 
ing in the dormant part give us an ideal and 
the resulting elation. 

We place certain relations complementary to 
men in our thought of God, whereupon parts 
in men that have no present organic use or are 
but slightly used are stimulated to activity. A 
religious enthusiast is organically more active 
than one who responds only to the organic stim- 
uli needed for present life. The elated lover 
also has enlarged physical and mental activities, 
and the products of the latter he attributes to 
the object of his love. An ideal becomes a 
motive, and demands a greater and more 
persistent activity than normal bodily needs 
create. In the allurements of vice the same 
process operates. When some dormant part 
of the organism is made active, weak men 
impute to the material source the pleasure that 
the renewed activity creates. Normal persons 
abhor vice because all their faculties are 
excited in normal ways, and they see in vice 
only its misery. But make men abnormal and 
thus render dormant some of their parts, and 
a picturing begins which attributes to the 



1 62 Heredity and Social Progress 

vicious act all those ideal relations that are 
necessary to revitalize the dormant part. Then 
a vice becomes to its devotees what God is 
to the enthusiast, or the object of love to the 
lover, and includes all the complementary re- 
lations necessary to arouse the full organism. 
It is therefore a religion, but a bad one. It is 
a love, but degrading. Its origin, none the 
less, is similar to that of other ideals, and its 
effectiveness as elation must be admitted. It 
can be eliminated only by making men normal 
and by giving them some outlet for every 
impulse. 

SUMMARY 

1. Psychological distinctions should conform to the 
physical background to which they correspond. 

2. Will is a manifestation of katabolic activity and is 
more pronounced in centres where the response to stimuli 
is quick and certain. A strong will means therefore the 
dominance of katabolic centres. 

3. Attention is not will. It is best where changes come 
slowly and abide the longest time. It is greatest in anabolic 
cells, and the power to think clearly grows as thought cells 
become anabolic. Decision is katabolic ; thought is ana- 
bolic. They are therefore apposites, and the one grows as 
the other falls off. 

4. Pleasure is not an emotion, but is the index of growth 



Some Terms 163 

and appears where surplus energy makes alternating dis- 
charges of energy possible. In contrast with it is the ela- 
tion or ecstasy due to the arousing of dormant parts. The 
routine of life calls into play but a part of each organism 
and often hardens its overused parts into feelingless struc- 
ture. Unusual stimulation is needed to invoke the maximum 
activity, and when it comes the flow of feeling is distinct 
from normal states. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Education 

In the popular view, education is a problem 
of addition. The mind is thought of as a 
storehouse where incoming goods are packed 
better by the wise than by the ignorant. Or, 
in another way, the same thought is empha- 
sized when the brain is referred to as in- 
creasing in size or weight. If the mind is a 
storehouse, the more compartments it has the 
more material can be put away to be brought 
out when needed ; indeed, the physiology of 
large brains seems to support the analogy and 
to justify the belief of men that knowledge is 
merely a matter of addition. This also is the 
thought back of the theory of the mind asso- 
ciated with cell growth and which appears to 
me to be little more than a clear statement of 
the popular theory. The public finds, in new 
language, the ideas it has held for ages, and 

164 



Education 165 

accepts them, not because of the biologic proofs, 
but because they coincide with the accepted 
view. What are "ids" and "determinants" 
but new names for the old apartments in which 
the mind is assumed to be divided ? And the 
more one has of them, the greater is his power 
to struggle and to survive. We must there- 
fore increase the number of apartments, the 
weight or the size of the brain, or the num- 
ber of ids and determinants. All this is the 
same thought expressed in different words, in 
whatever form it reflects the popular thought. 
It may be called progress by addition, for it 
assumes that additional matter makes for supe- 
riority and determines contests in survival. 

I do not intend to argue against this theory, 
or to establish another one. We need not so 
much proof of a new theory as a clear pres- 
entation of the basis on which one may rest. 
Men adopt a theory to explain facts, but the 
old one survives, in spite of inherent difficul- 
ties, until the new is so clearly formulated as 
to displace it. I wish, therefore, to contrast 
a theory of progress by differentiation with a 
theory of progress by addition, and to show 



1 66 Heredity and Social Progress 

how the acceptance of the former would 
modify men's ideas of education. 

A theory of differentiation impHes that two 
differentiating objects are so united that the 
strength of the whole is not that of each part 
in isolation, but that of the strongest of both 
parts in union. There is then a division of 
labor by which each part does what it is best 
fitted to do and the combination makes for 
strength. Each person is made of combina- 
tions of anabolic and katabolic cells. If the 
outer body is anabolic, the inner body is kata- 
bolic or the reverse. In the former case we 
have a woman ; in the latter, a man. But 
even if the detailed proof I have given is not 
accepted, there is much inductive evidence 
that the internal phenomena of men and of 
women are the reverse of their external mani- 
festations, to support the general facts against 
any weakness of the detailed proof. What- 
ever advantages accrue to anabolic tendencies 
reach the race through the bodies of women 
and the minds of men, while katabolic domi- 
nance expresses itself in the minds of women 
and the bodies of men. Women think quickly, 



Education 167 

and to them come the advantages of decision ; 
men think slowly, and theirs are the gains of 
clear analysis. 

If these facts are accepted, we progress 
through an increase of differentiation which 
intensifies analytic and katabolic tendencies.^ 
The strongest example of one extreme would 
not be so potent as any combination of the 
two. Elimination injures because it throws 
back differentiations towards their undifferen- 
tiated beginning. There is a net loss if in 
struggle either the anabolic or katabolic is 
cut off. We need both the more anabolic 

^ I do not mean that all differentiations are based on these 
tendencies. They are also complex in nature and have many 
physical and chemical elements that vary according to their own 
laws. They are merely representative differentiations brought 
into prominence by the recognized differences between male and 
female. The real point is that developed organisms are made up 
of delicate equilibriums, the changes on one side being in an 
opposite direction to those on the other. If one gland is acid 
some other is alkaline, and if one is disturbed so as to make it 
more neutral, the other is also brought back to a less differentiated 
state. The higher the organism the greater the number of these 
complementary differentiations and the more delicate is the equi- 
Ubrium that must be maintained. We should think of ourselves 
as a loosely organized group of units, each of which is balanced 
with some other and subject to destructive emotions if this balance 
is disturbed. 



1 68 Heredity and Social Progress 

and the more katabolic and we need them 
combined in different ways in men and 
women. We cannot eliminate women and 
liave men because men happen to be a bit 
stronger, nor can we eliminate the anabolic 
or katabolic because the other has more in- 
dividual strength. Anabolism in men gives 
clear logical thought; in women it makes 
good mothers. Katabolism in men makes 
them strong, active, and productive; in 
women, it gives instructive, sympathetic, and 
emotional action. If struggle eliminates sym- 
pathy and emotion from women, it eliminates 
at the same time the strength and energy of 
men, because both these sets of qualities 
represent the tendencies in beings toward 
katabolism. Good mothers and clear thinking 
in men also belong together and represent 
the anabolic tendency. It is a commonplace 
that great men have good mothers, but the 
reason for it is more physical than at first 
appears. It is not that as a good mother 
she influences the character of her son, but 
that men are internally what women are ex- 
ternally, so that physical heredity of the 



Education 1 69 

mother becomes the mental heredity of the 
son. Make good mothers and they will bear 
great sons because the mind of the son is 
the doubling of the body of the mother. 

I may be wrong in detail, but if this prin- 
ciple is in a measure correct, education is a 
double process. In certain relations anabolic 
qualities are strong or weak ; while where they 
are strong or weak, katabolic qualities are of 
the opposite degree. Where men are physi- 
cally strong or mentally weak, there women have 
naturally the opposite quality. Together they 
properly supplement each other and as the 
differentiation becomes more pronounced, the 
mutual dependence of the sexes is increased. 

We are therefore approaching, if we have 
not already arrived at, the time when more use 
must be made of these facts. Isolated men or 
isolated women are not able to make any real 
social progress. As men develop, we gain at 
certain points, but we likewise lose at others. 
Civilized men are clear in thought but they are 
indecisive in action. There is an increasing 
loss each year because educated men have so 
little decision that the control of affairs goes to 



lyo Heredity and Social Progress 

less developed types. The education of men 
and the growth of their vices are simultaneous 
because vice is indecision and a result of the 
same causes that clarify thought. So long, 
then, as we attempt progress through the action 
of elimination upon men, we lose as much as 
we gain, for if we eliminate the anabolic we 
gain decision and morality, but we lose clear 
thought. If, on the contrary, the katabolic is 
eliminated, thought becomes strong and clear, 
but the evidences of indecision and resulting 
vice spring up on all sides. We see that elimi- 
nation is no aid to progress, and that while it 
continues there is a mere shifting of qualities 
with no gain. 

This difference leads, though not by the 
usual method, to a well-known biological dis- 
tinction. It has been shown that some quali- 
ties are natural and come by inheritance, while 
others have to be acquired by the men of each 
age. According to the theory I am advocating, 
this difference in characters is retained, but put 
into a new form. A natural character is the 
strong side of each mental unit. An acquired 
character is the attempt to implant in a being 



Education 1 7 1 

the qualities that are naturally lacking. The 
weak side may be strengthened, but the basis 
on which it rests will not be improved — it will 
probably be weakened — by heredity. The re- 
sult is that if the quality is to exist at all in the 
descendant, he must acquire it not only as his 
father did, but perhaps with even greater effort. 
If, on the contrary, a quality arises from a 
stronger part of a being, it appears with in- 
creased vigor in the descendant and does not 
require the nurturing necessary to qualities 
having a weak basis in heredity. Some mental 
qualities have an anabolic and others a kata- 
bolic basis. The first will be natural to men 
and must be acquired by women, while the 
second will be natural to women and must be 
acquired by men. Successful persons must 
have both groups of qualities. 

Men and women tend to be different. They 
must be kept on an equality by an education 
which shall give to each sex the characters 
that are natural to the other. To put it simply, 
civilized men are good thinkers, the women of 
their race have strong wills, and education 
must give decision to men and clear thought to 



172 Heredity and Social Progress 

women. But these qualities will not become 
natural in spite of the endeavor to instil them. 
The differentiation in men and women will 
gradually increase and the basis on which the 
acquired characters rest will be weaker. On 
the other hand, less education will be needed 
by natural characters. They will simply de- 
mand an awakening which comes in due time 
if the conditions of life are kept normal. 

The acceptance of this doctrine would re- 
verse many educational maxims. Holding the 
mind to be a group of apartments, we try to 
add more of them where men and women are 
already strong, and strive to educate women to 
be good mothers and men to be clear thinkers. 
But women are made mothers by a natural 
process. Men cannot improve on it if they 
would. In spite of all the talk, there is no 
danger of a race of unnatural mothers. On 
the contrary, mothers are improving, but by a 
method that education cannot affect. So, too, 
men are, to an increasing degree, accurate 
thinkers. But they would progress without 
education. Education may rouse their minds 
at an earlier age, or give to certain individuals 



Education 173 

an advantage over others, but it adds nothing 
to the clear thinking of the race. Thought is 
what it is because of quahties men inherit, and 
will improve only as heredity is modified. 

Education has, therefore, little place among 
natural characters. It has, however, an increas- 
ing place among those that are acquired, since 
the wills of men and the thought of women 
increasingly need education. The higher level 
of equality can thus be reached by both sexes : 
every one needs all the qualities of the race, 
and his education ought to supplement the 
natural qualities that heredity has given. 

Education is the strengthening of weak 
characters — those that heredity tends to 
dwarf by the very differentiation which acting 
upon other characters renders them strong, 
natural and more advantageously inherited. 
Conscious processes must be directed toward 
the weak side of human nature, to round the 
character so that in each individual all parts 
are strong. Education cannot improve on nat- 
ural characters. Progress is the development 
of the strong, not where they are strong, but 
where they are weak. The strength of the 



174 Heredity and Social Progress 

strong character is the result of a natural dif- 
ferentiation with which men have little to do, 
but the strength of weak characters is in their 
hands. Men can level up their weaknesses 
until their whole nature is strong. 

Conscious education now acquires a defi- 
nite scope in the field where man's power is 
greatest. The awakening of strong characters 
requires no stimulus from without — rather 
should it be delayed than hastened. Real 
education is the bringing of the weak in one 
set of individuals up to the level of the strong 
in others. The standard is always an objec- 
tive one — the manifestation of the natural 
characters in the strong. Men's defects may 
be measured and improved by the standards 
set by women in whom these characters are 
natural, and women's defects may be eradi- 
cated by imposing on them the standards and 
the thoughts of men. In so far as education 
moulds men and women, it will be more effec- 
tive if the education of men is in the hands of 
women and that of women in the hands of men. 
So will education create that equality which 
the process of natural differentiation prevents. 



Education 175 

The paradox of the situation is this: try 
to make men and women ahke, and they will 
become increasingly different ; try to make 
them different, and their likenesses will in- 
crease. But this contradiction disappears when 
we see that if the weak sides of men and 
women are developed, social conditions are 
improved ; where the natural process can work 
more effectively the natural differentiation of 
men and women increases. But if all the 
effort of education centres on the attempted 
development of strong natural qualities, the 
effort is wasted, and wrong social ideas are in- 
culcated which reduce the productive power of 
society. Natural differentiations are checked 
and both men and women sink back toward 
that undifferentiated state out of which the 
race has come. 

Besides education there is a discipline nec- 
essary to effective activity. Character largely 
depends on the regularity of action and on 
the quickness of response. Discipline is a 
greater directness of action ; it is the more 
economic accomplishment, through the kata- 
bolic quick-acting centres, of that which is 



176 Heredity and Social Progress 

natural to anabolic centres. Discipline is arti- 
ficial action because of this transference of 
the motives of action from one class of cen- 
tres to another. A man is disciplined by the 
development of his body where the katabolic 
tendencies are dominant. A woman, however, 
is disciplined by the development of her mind, 
thereby displacing the emotional and erratic 
motives which move uncultivated women. 
Discipline differs from education in that the 
discipline of men comes best from men and 
that of women from women. These processes 
unite in bringing the race up to its maxi- 
mum powers: the awakening of strong natu- 
ral characters comes under normal conditions 
by a natural process; education strengthens 
weak characters and brings all to an equality 
in the standard which is natural in the strong, 
and it should be conducted by the strong for 
the benefit of the weak; supplementing these 
two processes should come a discipline which 
transfers all action to the more katabolic side 
of each person. Effective action must be 
quick and decisive, and this it cannot be except 
when the centres most easily disturbed are 



Education 177 

taught to respond to the stimuli consequent to 
every act. Discipline is of the strong and is 
best inculcated by those most like the one 
who acquires it. 

In this delineation of the natural powers of 
men and women I have reversed the posi- 
tion ordinarily given to them. Men are usu- 
ally thought to have character and decision, 
while indecision and a lack of purpose are 
the usual charges against women. The popu- 
lar view, however, emphasizes the primitive 
characteristics of the two sexes and not those 
manifested in advanced races. The primitive 
man is decisive, but it is an alertness due to 
wrath. Take away this one motive and he is 
the embodiment of indecision. So, too, primi- 
tive women hesitate, but it is a hesitation due 
to fear. This one motive typifies the char- 
acter of primitive women as wrath does that 
of men. A strong, vivid bodily state makes 
men act and women hesitate. Exclude these 
bodily states and the popular notion of men 
and women fails. Wrath and fear are bodily 
states, not mental characters; they are dif- 
fused conditions, not specially located powers. 



178 Heredity and Social Progress 

Wrath, therefore, affects the outer bodies of 
men where they are katabolic, and fear affects 
the outer bodies of women where they are 
anabolic. Wrath is natural to men and fear is 
natural to women, so long as their bodily 
states control them. When, however, the mind 
becomes dominant by the displacement of 
primitive conditions, these traits disappear and 
the real mental characters of men and women 
show themselves. Bodily fear in women is 
replaced by the mental decisiveness of civilized 
women, and the wrathful energy of men is 
lost as soon as analytic thought makes action 
slow and causes men to change from direct to 
indirect methods. The civilized man loses the 
effective promptness of primitive men and 
regains it only by a bodily education that gives 
him an acquired ability to do that which is 
natural to women. 

SUMMARY 

I . The popular view of education is a theory of progress 
by addition. It is assumed that the mind gains in strength 
as new units are added. In contrast with this is a theory of 
progress by differentiation. Complementary units become 
strong, each in its way, and supplement each other so that 



Education 1 79 

the aggregate has the strength of each part at its strongest 
point. A group of cells, some losing where others gain, 
may, without any net addition, gradually acquire fresh power 
and prevent earlier weaknesses. Each centre acts where it 
is strong, and is protected where it is weak. 

2. The difference between anabolic and katabolic cells 
furnishes the basis for such a differentiation. If in human 
beings one class of cells dominates internally and the other 
externally, types of thought and activity can develop that 
supplement each other. The thought and activity of men 
and women will also differ and thus furnish additional basis 
for differentiation. 

3. This complementary differentiation does not permit 
elimination, for both the parts are retained. Any elimina- 
tion cuts off differentiation and forces organisms back to the 
undifferentiated equality of cells from which progress took its 
start. 

4. Clear thought is anabolic ; decision is katabolic. In 
each person one of these is natural and may be awakened ; 
the other must be acquired. One type or sex should be 
educated along lines on which a mere awakening would 
suffice for the other, which in turn needs education where 
the natural powers of the first give it an advantage. 

5. Natural characters increase in strength through physi- 
cal differentiations and not through education. They need 
less to evoke them with each step in social progress. Ac- 
quired characters represent the side of each person that 
becomes weaker by differentiation. They must be brought 
out anew in each generation, and with each step in progress 
they demand more attention. 

6. Differentiation disturbs the natural equality, weaken- 
ing one side as much as it strengthens the other. The 



i8o Heredity and Social Progress 

equality is restored through an education in the acquired 
characters that raises the level of the whole being to that 
of the strongest racial traits. Without education there can 
be no equality among advanced peoples. Differentiation is 
natural ; the levelling must be conscious and is therefore 
expensive. 



CHAPTER XV 

Reform 

Progress depends on two essential qualities, 
— quickness of action and slowness of thought. 
The first results from a mental differentiation 
which increases alertness, and the second 
springs from an opposing tendency toward slow- 
ness. To differentiate and to become strong 
in one direction, is to remain naturally weak in 
the other. Education should consciously meet 
this deficiency. The strong side of each per- 
son is the result of a natural differentiation 
which comes of itself when social conditions 
permit, but the weak side having no natural 
support so tends to be dwarfed by progress 
that care is necessary to maintain its position. 

The strong and the weak in men arise to- 
gether, and are parts of the same differentia- 
tion. If a person has periods of elation, due to 
a fund of surplus energy outing itself through 
natural characters, he will also be subject to 
spells of melancholy when his energy is below 

i8i 



1 82 Heredity and Social Progress 

its normal level. The undifferentiated person 
escapes both of these, or at least he never 
experiences them in their extreme forms. The 
highly differentiated person rises higher than 
the mediocre man when in exultant moods, but 
he also sinks deeper in periods of depression. 
His weakness is measured by his helplessness 
in depression. He thus demands more safe- 
guards for survival. 

The empirical and the rational in men also 
rest on a complementary differentiation by 
which progress in one direction is supple- 
mented by a like progress in the other. Prac- 
tical men, disliking theorists, wish all men 
were like themselves, and yet the absence of 
theorists would not make practical men more 
practical. If theorists failed to survive, the 
seemingly practical survivors would be less 
differentiated, and hence more stupid. Elimi- 
nation of either class forces all men back to 
an undifferentiated mediocrity. For example, 
it seemed possible in Spain to make people 
religious by cutting off heretics and agnostics. 
The result, however, was not the development 
of religion, but the sinking back of the whole 



Reform 183 

nation into the earlier and grosser forms of 
superstition. Spaniards became alike by de- 
scending in the scale of civilization. 

Progress then is not the making of the 
strong, but that protection of the weak by 
which differentiation becomes possible. A 
forward movement can care for itself if the 
initial conditions are favorable, and human 
efforts are of little avail in augmenting or in 
changing the direction of these forces. With 
the aid of their strong characters men may 
move forward as far as the initial economic 
forces take them. But these forces will not 
aid men on their weak sides, because natural 
changes make individual weaknesses feebler 
instead of stronger. The series of steps 
making for progress, although almost complete, 
lacks enough elements to block progress, when 
no efforts are made to strengthen the dwarfed 
characters in men. And strengthening the 
weak is not a final process, but one which 
must be repeated by each generation with 
ever increasing care. The strength of the 
strong is natural, that of the weak is acquired. 
The differentiation of powers is the outcome 



184 Heredity and Social Progress 

of natural processes; the movement towards 
equality must be nurtured. The exploitation 
of the weak by the strong and the dwarfing 
of feeble characters by the strong are the 
natural results of the pressure exerted by the 
strong. A check to progress here arises for 
which there is no natural remedy. When, 
therefore, nations wish to progress, it is these 
tendencies which nullify their efforts. 

A backward race or class need not be radi- 
cally altered to fit it for civilization. Most of 
the changes come of themselves if the ini- 
tial evils are removed. Give the class or the 
dwarfed character a suiplus, and spontaneous 
changes will reorganize society. The initial 
step in progress is protection, and a flow of 
income from the strong to the weak. 

An illustration is furnished by the changes 
in the immigrants to America. A few genera- 
tions make them completely American, not 
because the conscious educational process has 
had sufficient power to do it, but because 
a few initial changes start a chain of natural 
causes which strengthen the strong individ- 
uals of the new classes and force their trans- 



Reform 185 

formation into Americans. Two things are 
necessary for this: the presence of a growth- 
creating surplus and the existence of com- 
mon emotions, so that men's qualities may be 
uniformly pruned, and may also grow anew 
in the same directions. The emotions of a 
race are not a natural inheritance due to 
growth, but are a part of the social environ- 
ment of its members, and act alike on all 
individuals under the stress of the emotions. 
Regeneration results wherever the surplus per- 
mits growth and places the person in proper 
contact with his environment. Society, there- 
fore, may expect these emotional changes to 
act upon every class which has gained the 
surplus on which growth and regeneration 
depend. It must guard, not these natural 
results of every forward movement, but the 
acquired characters which become weaker with 
progress, and require an increasing surplus in 
order to preserve the natural equality of classes 
and of related parts. 

The development of a lower race — let us 
say the negroes in America —r- does not necessi- 
tate remaking the negro by an artificial process. 



1 86 Heredity and Social Progress 

Set free the series of natural changes, and the 
final results will take care of themselves. A 
surplus includes regeneration and new emo- 
tions, forces which will act and react until the 
whole class has been brought up to the level 
of its environment. Two races in one envi- 
ronment cannot be kept apart except by some 
exploitation that harms the weaker one of 
them. The amplest protection and a surplus- 
yielding discipline will stimulate the forces in 
a lower class which will ultimately raise them 
to the level of the highest. Each new disci- 
pline yields a new surplus which offers emotion 
and regeneration a fresh opportunity to evoke 
natural qualities. The more freely we give to 
the weak, the more is gained by the strong. 
The morality of similar men is embodied in 
the Golden Rule, but for dissimilar men the 
law of service is yet higher. Do unto those 
unlike yourself what they cannot do for them- 
selves. Let your surplus energy go out through 
your natural character for the benefit of those 
who have it not. 

Progress cannot end while the natural growth 
in differentiated strength is followed b}' a con- 



Reform 187 

scious growth toward social equality. The 
qualities that by natural progress have come 
to men must be given by them to women, and 
those that nature has given to women must be 
instilled into men. And every class must give 
its strength and characters to other classes and 
each race its neighbors. Then a new surplus 
will appear and a new group of natural quali- 
ties will be developed in each sex, race, and 
class. The weakening of the basis of acquired 
characters will create a constantly enlarging 
deficit ; but, on the other hand, the increasing 
strength of the natural characters can bear this 
burden with greater ease. 

If progress is by differentiation, the scheme 
of reform is not the one we should use if prog- 
ress were by addition. In addition the new 
quality in the strong needs nurturing, and the 
weak must be eliminated, for their absence is 
no loss, but rather a gain to society. But if 
progress is by differentiation, the weak and the 
strong arise together, and both are indices of 
progress. The natural character is strong, and 
for its development no attention is necessary : 
its complement, the acquired character, is weak. 



1 88 Heredity and Social Progress 

and must be kept active. In order that the 
strong may thrive, these weak acquired char- 
acters must be transmitted by conscious effort 
through imitation and by education. The con- 
scious process acting upon the acquired char- 
acter builds up what the natural process tends 
to dwarf. It thus preserves social equality and 
makes new progress in differentiation possible. 
Through elimination the really strong is cut 
off at the point where it becomes weak, and 
the survivor is the undifferentiated — the medi- 
ocre — who is strong in struggle because he 
has that unspecialized unity upon which inde- 
pendent action depends. Genius, however, is 
a well-supported differentiation, not a net addi- 
tion to the powers of men. To be mediocre 
is to be, not organically weak, but organically 
undifferentiated. Elimination does not act 
against the mediocre, but is in their favor.^ 

^ The selfish, like the mediocre, represent the undifferentiated 
neutral state in which life took its start. In the delicate and 
numerous equilibriums of an organism its activities and consump- 
tion must also be varied and harmonious. It cannot move far in 
any one way without setting devolution at work. While egoism 
represents a neutral state, altruism represents an elaborate bal- 
ancing of physical forces and grows in force as organisms rise in 
the scale of being. Its basis is physical, not psychic. 



Reform 1 89 

Mediocre men must be elevated by the 
awakening of their natural powers and by an 
acquired ability to offset their natural weak- 
nesses. The transformation of the mediocre 
is through the emotions, which cut away and 
regenerate without the destruction of death. 
Each retreat and advance differentiates and 
evokes new natural powers : the whole race is 
elevated and stupidity disappears, not by elimi- 
nation, but by regeneration, which is the power 
to reform. Every being may be acted on by the 
emotional forces which mould character. It is 
the true aim of reform to free these forces in 
action and to let the natural characters evoked 
by them work out the salvation of the race. 
They can be trusted to do their work after 
conscious effort has surmounted the initial 
difHculties. 

SUMMARY 

1. The characters of men improve, not by addition, but 
by differentiation. To be strong in one direction is to be 
weak in another, and the deficiency must be made up by 
conscious education. 

2. The strong can care for itself, as it has a natural back- 
ground and each new differentiation adds to its natural 



IQO Heredity and Social Progress 

strength. The opposite differentiation by becoming dwarfed 
loses its natural support. It is kept active only by conscious 
attention. 

3. Reform should therefore be directed toward helping 
the weak. The blocks to progress lie in the aggressions 
of the strong which prevent the weak from getting in the 
current of differentiation which evokes natural characters. 
A backward race does not have to be made over to fit it for 
civilization. Most of the desired changes will come spon- 
taneously if the initial evils are removed. 

4. The strong inherit the natural changes of advantage to 
men, but the weak grow weaker through these changes and 
must receive more aid from the strong in order to restore 
the equality. In this equality common emotions and a 
social surplus in which all participate are necessary. The 
emotions cut all down to a common starting-point, and the 
surplus creates similar growth in all. Emotional changes 
will act on any class which has the surplus upon which 
growth and regeneration depend. 

5. There can be no progress without an acquired equality. 
Each race and class should in turn impress its natural char- 
acters on those who lack them. When this is done, new 
differentiations bring new natural characters, and in the 
adjustment which follows a surplus arises that may be used 
to find a new equality by means of developing acquired 
characters in the weak. 

6. Genius is a differentiation, not an addition to the pow- 
ers of men. The mediocre are the undifferentiated. They 
must be transformed by emotions that cut back and regen- 
erate, but do not destroy. Every person can be acted upon 
by the emotional forces which mould character. Reform 
merely sets these forces in action and lets the development 



Reform 191 

of natural characters do the rest. They need no help when 
once aroused. 

7. It is the democratic bringing of all up to the level of 
the best and not the formation of new characters that should 
be the conscious aim of man. Nature will care for progress 
if men will care for reform. 



CHAPTER XVI 
The Result 

Our leading question has been : How is 
the social surplus of an epoch transformed 
into permanent conditions and mental traits ? 
This, as we now see it, divides into several 
questions, the answers to which must conform. 
Does progress start from a deficit or from a 
surplus? Does genius come by additions or 
differentiation ? Does education improve natu- 
ral or acquired characters ? Does reform come 
through strengthening the strong or by help- 
ing the weak ? 

In all this the concrete problem really is : 
Does progress start from a deficit or from a 
surplus ? Current biology and classical eco- 
nomics unite in making a deficit the initial 
force in progress. It is well known that Dar- 
win took his clew from Malthus, but it is not 
often perceived how intimately the pessimism 

192 



The Result 193 

of the classical economists is related to the 
process of elimination as presented in biology. 
And in support of these doctrines is also 
much of current morality and religion. That 
morality begins in poverty and disappears in 
prosperity, and that salvation is for the poor 
alone, are preached with vigor in many ways. 
If the premise on which all this rests is faulty, 
many conclusions must be summarily rejected 
that viewed empirically seem to have a sound 
basis. The field is then cleared in a way that 
makes new evidence attainable, and this evi- 
dence will have a far higher value than any 
mere discussion of particular points could 
have. The reader should come back to this 
preliminary question at every point, and must 
reject this or that mass of evidence as he 
decides this question in the one way or the 
other. If he decides with me that progress 
starts with a surplus, his decision on the other 
debatable points will also be with me. 

The economic process begins with a sur- 
plus and ends in a return flow of goods from 
the strong to the weak. The biologic process 
begins also with a surplus but ends in a com- 



194 Heredity and Social Progress 

plementary differentiation. By this process 
genius, greatness, and other sought quaUties 
are made. Equality is a conscious tendency 
with no natural background. The uncon- 
scious tendency is toward differentiation and 
the inequality of strong, natural characters. 
The two processes are thus supplementary. 
If the economic process furnishes the material 
in the shape of a widely diffused suiplus, the 
biologic process, when once started, will work 
itself out unconsciously. Men need not think 
of it, but they must think and plan for equal- 
ity. It depends on the reversal of the natural 
process by which the strong in men becomes 
stronger. If, then, men work for genius 
and neglect equality, they get neither; but if 
they work for equality, they gain both genius 
and equality. The one is the natural and 
the other the acquired result of a surplus. 
Each deficit leads to some elimination and 
each surplus to some differentiation. Deficits, 
therefore, eliminate the weak, while differen- 
tiations create genius and the natural char- 
acters through which it expresses itself. But 
we should not forget that with every strong 



The Result 195 

natural character is a weak acquired one which 
needs aid in its development; and for every 
person and class strong in some particular, 
there are others increasingly weak and more 
dependent upon the strong for their comple- 
mentary relations. Men are all strong and 
they are all weak. The development of the 
strong should be, not where they are strong, 
but where they are weak. Only when this is 
clearly seen does the theory of progress be- 
come a working hypothesis in conformity 
with practice. 

The vital point in all progress, then, is the 
creation of a social surplus. It will make both 
a biologic and an economic circuit ; and each 
circuit will end in stronger characters and 
more equality. A social surplus should, there- 
fore, be a perpetual fund always disappearing 
but ever reappearing in some new form. The 
parallel changes in economic and biologic life 
will thus run into each other and be expres- 
sions of the same ultimate forces. The facts 
in one field must correspond to those in the 
other and be illustrations of the adjustment 
to nature that man is seeking. 



196 Heredity and Social Progress 

The primary avenue of the exit for surplus 
energy is reproduction. The simplest organ- 
isms have no other means of utilizing it. The 
secondary avenue for the exit of a surplus is 
growth — the duplication of parts which re- 
main united in a whole. But the end is not 
here, for when energy goes out in growth, it 
must finally come back to reproduction. All 
vital series, no matter how long, must culmi- 
nate in reproduction. 

Of these indirect series there are two kinds, 
— simple and complex. In a simple multicel- 
lular organism the series is growth, folds, ovaries, 
and sex products. Growth if rapid is unequal 
and its inequalities are the cause of folds, which 
become ovaries from which sex products are 
emitted. Complex organisms have no more 
elements than these, but they are united in 
more striking combinations. The series now 
becomes growth, folds, ovaries, renewed growth, 
enclosed sex products, nerves, emotions, reduc- 
tions, regenerations, renewed growth, ovaries, 
exposed sex products, and then reproduction. 
These complex multicellular organisms differ 
from simple organisms in that they are double. 



The Result 197 

Growth through an internal series of changes 
fails of its ultimate goal ; but external growth, 
duplicating the internal series, is enabled, 
by its position, to complete the series and 
to end in reproduction. Complex organisms 
have an equilibrium to maintain between in- 
ternal and external growth — a fact which 
explains why they are not merely simple or- 
ganisms on a larger scale and with more 
surplus. The maintenance of equilibrium gives 
rise to the peculiar problems of complex or- 
ganisms. 

The first of these is the problem of life, as 
seen in the simplest unicellular organisms ; 
it is probable that this life depends upon cer- 
tain chemical and physical principles, many of 
which are now well known. But we need not 
wait for a complete solution of difficulties in 
our way here before answering our central 
question, because the particular facts on which 
we depend are so well established. When 
additional primary laws are discovered dealing 
with life, they must incorporate the secondary 
laws with which we are familiar. It is safe, 
therefore, to accept the prevailing biologic 



198 Heredity and Social Progress 

doctrine of cell life and to use its conclusions 
as premises in further discussion. 

It does not, however, seem to me that biolo- 
gists are equally clear about the second 
problem, that of growth as separate from that 
of life. I have tried to state it in a simple 
and distinct form. The duplication of parts 
has its own laws independent of those of life, 
and when they are dominant, simple multi- 
cellular organisms result with the same vital 
principles that unicellular organisms have, but 
with a complexity that arises from the differ- 
entiation of parts. 

The third problem has to do with the 
equilibrium found between organisms with a 
double growth and its effects in nerves and 
consciousness. Emotions are the great factor 
in the equilibrium and they act through reduc- 
tions and regeneration, which gives a harmony 
to parts that would otherwise be divergent in 
their tendencies. Organs are, in fact, organ- 
isms reduced to harmony after many regenera- 
tions' but at the same time so differentiated 
that the action of each supplements that of the 
others. 



The Result 199 

The fourth problem is that of survival, and 
here perhaps the widest departure from cur- 
rent views appears. Survival has been made 
primary in the doctrines of Darwin ; but may 
not survival be but an accident and not the 
cause of the essential features on which life 
and growth depend? Let life and growth 
become complex, and survival acts effectively ; 
but it is not the cause of the forces that 
produce complexity and differentiation. They 
exist in their own right and work out their 
ends regardless of survival. By survival the 
laws of life and growth have neither been 
made nor influenced. The simplest life has 
all the principles of the fittest life, but these 
elements are not so often repeated and 
moulded into new combinations. 

Man is the highest form of multicellular 
organisms, and his evolution has all the com- 
plexity that the preceding stages permit. In 
unicellular organisms, or even in simple multi- 
cellular organisms, progress is through elimina- 
tion, but when differentiations appear in men, 
both of them persist and are brought into har- 
mony by some division of labor or of function. 



200 Heredity and Social Progress 

The first of these differentiations is that of 
mind and body. Between the two there is no 
sharp demarcation. The one is merely more 
mind than body, and the other is more body 
than mind. A second differentiation is be- 
tween the sensory and motor organs. Here 
again we find highly differentiated functions 
but no sharp limits ; the sensory organs have 
some motor functions and the motor organs 
contain elements that would, under favor- 
able conditions, transmit afferent impulses. A 
third differentiation results in acquired and 
natural characters. Natural characters have 
inherited organic connections by which each 
action or function follows directly after its 
organic antecedent. Acquired characters are 
linked in consciousness. The two elements 
thus united had their organic beginnings at 
different stages of evolution, and thus are in 
their evolution independent. The conscious 
element needed to unite them is a mental 
association. 

Another differentiation is between organs of 
action and organs of control. The conscious, 
the sensory, the acquired, dominate the organs of 



The Result 201 

movement and create for them their environ- 
ment. This makes a marked difference be- 
tween the adjustment of an animal and man. 
The motor organs of simple organisms come 
in contact with the physical environment, and 
react directly against it. The motor organs of 
men are sheltered. The foot or hand does not 
touch the real environment on which survival 
depends, but reacts against an environment 
created for it by the organs of control. The 
real object that determines why a man in New 
York survives may be a thousand miles away. 
There is thus for man environment within 
environment, each depending on an exterior 
one against which it reacts. 

Distinction must also be drawn between 
natural and acquired organs of expression, 
— the hand and foot being in the first class, 
the tool or machine belonging to the second. 
So too there are natural and acquired organs 
of impression. The eye and ear are natural, 
while the telephone, the newspaper, and art 
products are acquired organs of impression. 
These acquired organs make up the capital 
of a nation, and to the concrete goods com- 



202 Heredity and Social Progress 

posing it are the natural organs of men 
adjusted. Capital is thus an environment 
between men and nature, and through it go 
the currents of expression or of impression 
that fix men's relations to the physical world. 
When a man is compared with a simple 
organism, all these acquired organs must be 
thought of as parts of the man, if his relations 
to nature are to be pictured as simply as are 
the relations between a simple organism and 
its environment. To apply to man the theory 
of survival we must use a concept of man 
that makes these acquired organs a part of 
him. Elimination for the simple organism 
means the cutting off or the crippling of some 
natural organ, and thus the destruction of life. 
With men it may mean merely the breaking 
down of an acquired organ not affecting life. 
A contest between men is decided when some 
mechanism used by one party breaks down ; 
it is not carried to a life and death struggle. 
One party yields when its property is destroyed 
or so put in danger that further contest is use- 
less. In a war, for example, the real contest 
now lies in the destruction of property. Mech- 



The Result 203 

anisms in the form of arms, cannon, food, 
means of transportation, and other supplies 
used by one side are matched against similar 
agents used by their opponents, and the relative 
excellence of their instruments as destructive 
agents is thus determined. 

There is, it is true, a destruction of life, but 
it is only an incident to the destruction of 
property, through which the real contest is 
decided. The poorer instruments are elimi- 
nated by the contest, but not the poorer men. 
So far as men are killed off, it is probably the 
best men on each side that die. It is not this 
loss of men that modifies society, but the emo- 
tions of those who see or hear of the destruc- 
tion of life and property. So too, when two 
nations or classes contest in the industrial field, 
the struggle ends when the material equipment 
of the one is shown to be inferior. Selection 
and elimination act on these tools, but not on 
the men. The emotional effect of this destruc- 
tion is an industrial depression which alone 
produces an abiding effect on men. Contests 
between men are thus usually decided within 
the realm of wealth; if they go farther, they 



204 Heredity and Social Progress 

destroy the mental associations by which the 
acquired characters are linked. I doubt if con- 
tests now go far enough to eliminate natural 
characters. These are brought into accord 
with their environment of acquired characters 
and of acquired organs by emotional changes 
that cut back and tlicn permit regeneration to 
develop a form harmonizing with the new 
conditions. Emotion is thus the agent of har- 
mony between the various natural and acquired 
organs. It modifies but does not destroy. 
Selection results from destruction, but in the 
case of man it is the destruction of mechan- 
isms and not life. Human progress is not 
therefore due solely to the action of selection. 
The play of emotion is equally effective, and 
in the case of natural characters it is per- 
haps the sole agent of progress. 

Progress in man is by differentiation and is 
a problem of equilibrium. There are no addi- 
tions to the elements of cell life. When they 
change it is by a differentiation from a neu- 
tral centre, which creates an equilibrium by 
means of the utilization of both differenti- 
ated parts. Modifications of structure in one 



The Result 205 

direction are matched by those in the other. 
Both parts are retained and none is elimi- 
nated. Every complex organism has the same 
equilibrium that is maintained in the undif- 
ferentiated unicellular organism, but to gain 
its complexity it moves out in both directions 
and utilizes here what is a waste product 
there. These are the complementary differen- 
tiations which add to the natural characters. 
The elimination of differentiations, that is, of 
those which end in the rejection of one part, 
is a backward step tending to restore the 
original neutrality. Such an elimination fails 
to fulfil the conditions of growth and throws 
organisms back to their neutral beginnings. 
Struggling organisms acquire an independence 
which aids in survival, but it is at the expense 
of the differentiations that make for progress. 
The cause of progress lies in the increase 
of energy which prosperity creates, and not 
in the eliminations due to adverse conditions. 
Remove the surplus and there is no progress ; 
restore it and there is no elimination. The 
changes that make for progress are emotional 
and do not destroy, but reduce and allow 



2o6 Heredity and Social Progress 

regeneration to restore harmony and simplicity. 
There is an ever onward movement so long as 
favorable conditions create growth which ends 
in additions, and unfavorable conditions arouse 
emotions which end in regeneration and har- 
mony. 

Character building is not an elimination 
but a complementary differentiation. Its pro- 
cesses carry farther the same changes which 
transform the embryo. It is surplus energy 
creating new antagonisms which end only in 
the destruction and regeneration of some 
organ along new lines. We are not born 
with characters ; they are made by regenera- 
tion. The internal body grows and changes 
through life, as the external body does in 
the embryo and in youth. Character is the 
internal body articulated as the external body 
is articulated, by its early contact with the 
environment. It is an expression not of will, 
but of surplus energy. We get character by 
doing, not by willing. It results from the 
transforming of thoughts into activity. 

In closing, a word of personal history may 
not be out of place. The principles here enun- 



The Result 207 

ciated have not always been clearly seen by me. 
I began with a much simpler programme and 
strove to put progress into fewer categories by 
measuring it through the initial stages of the 
dynamic movements with which young na- 
tions start. Here, I thought, is the normal phe- 
nomena, and all else represents some past 
influence no longer active. Free life from its 
restrictions, and we have a pleasure economy 
and a normal order of progress. The natural 
curve of thought would move from concrete 
economic events upward to its highest forms. 
Nothing is real progress which does not form 
a part of this curve. 

But this rigid concept to which I so persist- 
ently held overlooks the influence of heredity. 
At length I saw that after economic epochs cease 
to exist, they live in the mental life they have 
created. Character, in the sense of inherited 
traits, has its curve of thought with as strong 
and clear an outline as that which marks the 
stress of economic conditions. Thought, I then 
said, has two curves, and nothing is normal 
until it reveals the movements of both. A pic- 
ture of English civilization I assumed to be 



2o8 Heredity and Social Progress 

more typical than one of American progress, in 
which the economic motives are so distinctly 
uppermost. 

I am now compelled to make another change 
and to seek the normal in a new direction. 
It was my belief, as I think it is the common 
belief as well, that the upbuilding forces in 
national life are effective early in its develop- 
ment, and that the destructive forces, coming 
later in a body, made a period of decay ; we say, 
for instance, that nations have a period of youth, 
maturity, and old age. But this analogy now 
seems fallacious. Life is not a simple upbuild- 
ing process followed by decay. Death is an 
accident to life, not a necessity. The destruc- 
tive or devolutional forces are always at work, 
even at the beginning; but in their normal 
function they create change, not death. Devo- 
lution is an essential part to progress. The 
upbuilding process continues only as life is cut 
back to create more vigorous growth. The 
normal, therefore, lies still farther away than 
I had supposed from those youthful periods 
when there are many additions but no change. 
There is nothing normal on which emotion 



The Result 209 

does not act and in which emotional changes 
are not visible. They give a simplicity to life 
which growth through economic changes can- 
not parallel. Thought must therefore have 
an emotional as well as an economic curve, and 
this in its broader aspects may prove to be 
social as contrasted with economic progress. 
At least the two fields appear more clearly 
distinct than ever before, and I have greater 
hope that a definite line of demarcation may 
be drawn between them. 



GENERAL SUMMARY 

It may not be out of place to state the general principles 
of which use has been made apart from the concrete prob- 
lems in which they appear. 

1. Growth and cell division. Organisms under favorable 
conditions accumulate energy which results in growth. 
This increase of mass is counteracted by cell division, which 
tends to reduce the size of individual organisms and to 
increase their number. 

2. Surface, unity and internal differentiation. The dis- 
ruptive forces act more powerfully at the centres of organ- 
isms than at the surface. The tendency to divide appears 
first at two internal centrosomes and gradually extends out- 
ward. This may be due to inadequate exits for waste prod- 
ucts. The surface or envelope thus becomes stronger and 
grows more rapidly than the interior. Folds result and 
cause many subsequent complexities. The disruptive ten- 
dencies in the interior are reduced by differentiations which 
so complement each part that what is not utilized by the 
one is food for the other. The amount of waste material is 
thus reduced and the organism correspondingly strength- 
ened. 

3. Double organisms. This internal tendency to divide 
and to differentiate causes the higher organisms to become 
practically if not in reality double. The differentiation of 
mind from body and the bilateral divisions of the body are 
instances of this tendency. 

211 



212 Heredity and Social Progress 

4. Grozvth and reproduction. Growth is more simple 
and dominant at the surface than in the interior, and as a 
result reproduction dominates first in the interior. Confined 
sex products result, which must break through the envelope 
to obtain an independent existence. When they fail they 
are transformed into nerve tissue, useful in preserving the 
unity of the organism. 

5. Emotional har^nony. The internal differentiations and 
the confinement of sex products destroy the internal unity 
of the organism. Each part tends to become independent. 
The unity of the organism is not mechanical but emotional. 
Each part devolves until the growth forces in it become 
dominant and then it evolves along new lines. This hap- 
pens again and again until the emotional shocks act on each 
part alike. Then an emotional harmony arises that pre- 
serves the organism and increases effectiveness. 

6. Natural vs. acquired characters. The great mass 
of social customs, habits, and traditions are acquired char- 
acters and are not inherited. They are due to the direct 
action of the present environment. Acquired qualities 
increase energy, which impels the possessor into new 
environments. Each new environment tends to develop 
acquired characters, through which the environment is 
better utilized, and these characters become primary by 
a movement into a new environment. Whatever natural 
character men have, the race acquired in some previous 
environment. 

7. Use is not the cause of characters, but the result 
of their appearance. Animals do not develop teeth because 
they eat hard food ; they eat hard food because they have 
teeth. Use creates surplus energy, which acts in a way to 
develop undifferentiated parts. Secondary characters thus 



General Summary 213 

arise, and the species moves into an environment where 
these characters are necessary, hence primary. 

8. Natural selection and emotion. Natural selection as- 
sumes that improvement is wrought out by the elimination 
of the weak. But emotion, like a far-reaching nervous sys- 
tem, extends out widely into the environment, and beings 
are strongly affected by it who are not directly involved in 
a given event, as when a man sees or hears of an accident. 
Emotion, then, in arresting development or in cutting 
back to a simpler state adjusts the organism more quickly 
to its changed environment than is done by natural selec- 
tion. 

9. Consciousness, will, and memory are, physiologically, 
properties of the ultimate germ cell. Consciousness is con- 
fined to katabolic epochs. Memory is a phenomenon of 
related parts,' a record of some growth or change in the 
tissues, accompanying a change of direction of nerve cur- 
rents and of activity. Will is the psychic expression of a 
reaction after an emotional devolution. A strong will is 
indicative of dominant katabolism. 

10. Surplus and deficit vs character and tradition. An 
economic surplus furnishes energy resulting in growth, 
which induces emotional changes, so disturbing present 
adjustment of organism to environment. This impels con- 
tention with the environment, or a migration to a new en- 
vironment, so giving rise to a change in character. An 
economic deficit blocks the first step in the series of 
changes. It prevents the formation of new tissues, organs, 
or customs, and hardens or fixes those already in use. 
Deficits build tradition, morality, imitation, and force upon 
each age the acquired characters of past ages. Selfishness 
is a consciously acquired aptitude due to existence under 



2 14 Heredity and Social Progress 

conditions which have created a deficit. Deficits end in a 
moral code, impressing motives of economy and self-asser- 
tion. 

1 1 . The agents of acquired characters. Imitation is a 
primitive means of adjustment ; the mechanism of it is 
inherited by the inner neural body, and affords acquired 
characters a method of propagation. Fear in weak organ- 
isms is the very best protection against extinction. It is a 
natural character, but still very effective in establishment 
of acquired characters. Reason is a property of the lowliest 
organisms ; it is in essence a recoil from the dissimilar 
and an acceptance of the similar. Discipline acts on outer 
organs of expression, making them so rigid that impulses 
pass inward or regenerate the primitive organs utilized by 
acquired characters. 

12. The problem of education is not one of addition. 
It is wholly a matter of acquiring character. It is a 
strengthening of the strong where they are weak, — a crea- 
tion of equality which the process of natural differentiation 
tends to prevent. 

13. Progress is not the making of the strong, but that 
protection of the weak in men by which differentiation 
becomes possible. This strengthening of the weak is not 
final, but must be repeated in each generation with increas- 
ing care. Give the dwarfed character a surplus, and spon- 
taneous changes will reorganize society. The cause of 
progress lies in the increase of energy which prosperity 
creates and not in the elimination due to adverse condi- 
tions. Remove the surplus and there is no progress ; re- 
store it and there is no elimination. The vital point in all 
progress is the creation of a social surplus. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH 
THOUGHT 

A Study in the Economic Intcrpfctation of History 

By SIMON N. PATTEN, Ph.D. 

Professor of Political Economy, University of Pennsylvania. 

Cloth Crown 8vo $3.00, net 



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"What is perhaps most remarkable about the general treat- 
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teristics. ... It is decidedly one of the best written and most 
thoughtful of recent books." — Tribune, Chicago. 

" Keen in its analysis, novel in its positions, and striking in its 
relationships of fact and principle is the author's discussion. . . . 
To a subject full of interest in these days the author has brought 
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doxes and an abundance of pithy aphoristic propositions which 
surprise and delight the reader." — The Philadelphia Times. 

"The economic interpretation of history is a distinctly modern 
idea. It has had a place in numerous recent books, but we do 
not recall any volume of importance where it is applied with the 
searching philosophical thoroughness of the present work. The 
author's logic and his observation are alike sound, and his grasp 
of the broad aspect of English development appears in every chap- 
ter. The presentation of the subject is scholarly, the terminology 
is accurate, the definitions are clear and almost always satisfactory, 
and the impression left on a thoughtful reader's mind is that of 
admiration at the scope and method of the work and interest in 
its intellectual offering. " — The Transcript, Portland, Me. 



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THE THEORY OF PROSPERITY 



SIMON N. PATTEN, Ph.D. 

Author of " The Development of English Thought',' etc. 



Cloth i2nio $1.25, net 



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heredity 2 



